The Raven's Desk

All Your Article Belong To Us

2005-11-26T00:36:00.000-06:00

The Fourth Estate

IIT Madras' newsletter since 2000

You know you are in trouble when the Fourth Estate editors write any of the following things in their notices-

· Submit articles, it's the write thing to do!

· We want your articles, but could you please also send along your prepositions, conjunctions, nouns...

· Articulate, but don't submit your article late!

· Contribute poetry to the Fourth Estate. We guarantee that you will get your word's worth.

· We want contributions for the fiction section, but please don't make a big story out of it...

You know you are in big trouble when they write all of them!

The Fourth Estate is back, and we are giving you only one chance to make sure that it is free from our 'jokes'...

Make sure it is filled with yours.

Anyone interested in contributing articles can submit them to festate@gmail.com, or directly to any of the editors before 10th December 2005.

Previous issues are available at http://www.iitmadras.org/news/pubs/fourth/

For further details, contact

Auso - 411 Godav, k_vaideesh@yahoo.co.in

Dodo - 446 Jamuna, electricaldodo@yahoo.com

BoFi - 108 Tapti, siddhartha.banerjee@gmail.com (That, btw, is me:)

Also, at the insistence of my good friend Amrut, I am unwillingly compelled to direct you to the fact that Saarang now has an official blog. I personally consider this a monumental waste of time, and, quite frankly,think it is a stupid idea, but there is a very good man behind it, and it would warm the cockles of his misguided heart were you to click on the link and give his site counter some good old counting to do. He will also greatly appreciate it if you write a comment praising the posts, and finally, if you pledge to come to Saarang along with everyone you know, well, that would just about make his day.

Chairman Mao, Where Art Thou

2005-09-01T08:30:00.000-05:00

This will not be much of a travelogue, for circumstances have conspired so as to prohibit that option. There really isn't much point in writing a travelogue after all the travelling has been done. An 'in retrospect' view of anything is tempered with subsequent experiences which tend to cast a new light on the original topics, and hence modify them. The thrill of the first time is gone; the emotions of the moment reduced to fragments of memory, or worse still, hastily scribbled jottings and photographs. All is mellowed down, colours made gray by the torpor of everyday life. A memory is but the shell of a moment in time, a filtered down account of one's feelings at that time. And as the days pass, the grayness spreads, the feelings weaken. Like Orpheus' plight, the spell of a moment lies as long as you hold it and move forward with it. Look back, and it is gone. Only the memory remains.

And yet this looking back is in many ways a liberation. The mind, freed from the shackles of time and place, and with a knowledge of how subsequent events unfold, is able to correctly analyze an event, and place it according to its relevance. A moment in one's life is never completely described by itself, but also by the impact it has subsequently. Write about it as it happens, and one is unable to view the slow chain of cause and effect that it triggers off. Step back and let time go by, and the chain unravels to its eventual conclusion, or atleast, if not eventual, to an intermediate conclusion which is by itself of some importance.

On my recent trip to China, I had intended to keep a regular travelogue and post it here, but as this post will eventually indicate, circumstances forced me to adopt the latter strategy. The question naturally arises as to which of the two would have served better, and to this I have no answer. During this trip, there happened to be two books in my bag. One of them, Milan Kundera's 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being', taught me 'Einmal ist keinmal'; that it is impossible to test a decision for anything that happens only once, for there is no basis for comparison. The second, Morris West's 'Summer of the Red Wolf', taught me the word 'Seannachie', Gaelic for storyteller. So, without further ado, I will accept the first view, and proceed to be your Seannachie, taking you on a tour of my recent trip to China.

Like many a travel story, this one starts at an airport. To be very precise, the Indira Gandhi International airport in Delhi. We (my parents and I) turned up there at 12 in the night, only to learn that our flight would not depart till four. As we went through the routine of check-in, customs and all the rest, a number of my father's colleagues turned up along with their families, some of whom I knew, the rest whom I would come to know fairly well over the next few days. There were also a large number of paints dealers, for this entire trip was actually a dealers conference, with us just tagging along.

As is usual during a four hour wait in an airport, not much really happened. The only interesting incident that I can remember was meeting this guy who claimed he was going to Milan to find work. The poor guy had the sketchiest knowledge of english, and was struggling to fill up the various forms thrown at him. I helped him with a few, but soon we had to move on. The last time I saw him, he was trying to ask a policeman for help in filling another form.

The 4 hour vigil in the airport lounge was followed by an equally painful plane journey. China Eastern airlines surprisingly managed to outdo Indian Airlines in its levels of shoddiness. The lowest point was reached when at six in the morning (indian time), I decided to ask for some tea and was met by an expression of incredulity. Not to be daunted, I pulled out my trump card by asking for 'cha', which is surprisingly both the chinese and bengali words for tea. This too was met by an expression of incredulity. To this day I have not figured out what language that air-hostess spoke. The only interesting thing about the flight was that the safety instructions were not given by the cabin crew, but were actually projected on a screen in the form of an anime video! But all the charms of a wide eyed animated figure explaining the nuances of tying seat belts was negated by my tealess state.

The first view of China that I had was Shanghai airport, and I have to admit it was pretty impressive. The entire structure, built in the shape of a bird in flight, is perhaps one of the most aesthetically pleasing airports that I have ever seen. A few days later, I found myself back in the same airport, and was again amazed at the brilliance of the structure. On our first visit, the beauty of the place was however marred by the fact that the chinese officials present there viewed us as a bunch of undesirable aliens, making us sit in a small room for about half an hour without any information whatsoever, and then herding us in a long line across two different terminals before we finally reached our connecting flight. This was the first time I came across the remarkable xenophobia of the Chinese, and their fanatical pride in their language. Shunning conventional wisdom, the chinese had gone so far as to write 'mens' and 'ladies', or something of that sort, on their restroom doors, in chinese characters! Deprived of the comfortingly familiar stick figures, most of us were forced to defer our requirements till we boarded the plane. I had heard of the joke of the kilt wearing scotsman being confused by the drawings on the restroom doors (the ladies toilet showed a stick figure with a skirt), but this was surely taking it too far.

The connecting flight started off on a sad note, as one of the dealers fell seriously ill, and had to be taken away to hospital moments before the flight took off (more on that in a later post). The flight somehow conspired to be even worse than the previous one. After about half an hour, everyone was handed a tray containing a packet of crackers, and a bowl of pickled vegetables. Now I am fairly adventurous in matters of food, as this post should go on to indicate, but everyone draws a line at some point. In my case, the line was drawn at a bowl of foul smelling, sour, unidentifiable pickled vegetables. Everyone else too, unsurprisingly, drew their lines at pickled vegetables, and so, that evening, China Eastern was confronted by a surfeit of uneaten, pickled vegetables. One hopes they had ready access to some powerful purgatives.

Beijing airport, in contrast to Shanghai, was somewhat of a let down, as it consisted of not much more than a big, drab concrete structure with unsmiling customs officials. We were met there by David (that's actually his english name, and till today none of us know his chinese name), who was to be our guide over the next few days. Standing in the midst of a big waiting room, complete with McDonald's, Starbucks and KFC, David managed to get us and the rest of my father's colleagues and families together, and shepherded us to a huge bus. The bus was somewhat of an overkill, considering we were only five families, but we weren't complaining.

As we were driven to our hotel by someone who David claimed was Beijing's second best driver ('the best one's in hospital..hee hee...'), I got my first glimpse of Beijing, and was singularly unimpressed. The city is huge, and imposing, with wide roads, fast cars, big buildings, and a complete absence of any kind of life. The traffic flowed regularly without any mishaps, the pavements were fairly clean, and empty, the shopping malls large, well lit, and again fairly empty. The city is surprisingly devoid of anything traditionally Chinese. All the buildings were remarkably modern, and fairly ugly. The entire city appeared to be a large Potemkin Village, erected to cover up its historic origins. Only the profusion of Chinese road signs gave any indication as to where we were.

After a quick bath, we all went for dinner in the hotel's coffee shop, where I got my first taste of the legendary Beijing duck, and then went on to double the number of animals that I had eaten. Squids, eels, octopii, ox tongues, quail, goose and some other unidentifiable creatures followed in dizzying succession, all eaten with a pair of chopsticks, whose use I had managed to master before coming to China. Yet, even after all this, I wasn't completely satisfied. There was something missing, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Many years ago I had gone to Mumbai for a holiday, and had experienced a very curious sensation. Now Mumbai was the first city, besides Kolkata and Delhi and Hyderabad, which I remember having visited. As we were driving from the airport to our relative's house, I remember looking around and thinking that the roads looked remarkably like Kolkata. It was then that I was suddenly hit by this odd idea that I had never left Kolkata after all, and that all that I was experiencing was actually one big hoax to fool me. Not until I first caught a glimpse of the sea was I fully convinced that I was in Mumbai after all.

Some time later, an english teacher had asked us, during the course of a lesson, at what point in our journey back home do we feel we are home. A friend of mine replied that he felt he had reached when he saw the bus stop prior to the one where he alighted. This reminded me of the Mumbai incident, for in effect they were the same thing. When we set out towards a fixed destination, we are always on the lookout for something to tell us we have reached- a roadsign, a bus stop, a famous monument, the sea, anything. Anything that tells us that our journey is over, and that we have arrived.

Connoisseurs of travel will no doubt scoff at my above statements. They will hurl quotations and arguments at me, trying to convince me that in travel, what really matters is the act of travelling itself, and not the destination. I will readily acquiesce to their views, and hurriedly withdraw from the debate. And yet I must go by what I have said. The only defence I have is that for me the journey consisted of a month of deliberation over going, almost backing out but being somehow coerced to come along, four hours wait in an airport chair, a further six hours on a plane, an hour or so cooped up in a tiny room at an airport, another two hours by plane, and then a bus ride at full speed with a guide cracking bad jokes, all washed down with pickled vegetables and a lack of tea. At the end of it all, I needed to know that I had actually reached. The duck had made a valiant attempt, as had the chinese road signs, the chopsticks, and a host of other small details. Yet something was still missing.

After dinner, we returned to our room, and I switched on my father's laptop. No sooner had I connected to the net did Keerthi turn up on Yahoo messenger. As I described to him my day, I tried connecting to blogger.com, but was somehow unable to do so. Initially I thought that there was a problem with the connection. But when subsequent blogs refused to open, I realized something was wrong. I mentioned this to Keerthi, and he, ever the omniscient, came up with this. And all of a sudden everything fell into place.

I had come to China in search of the mystic orient that we have all grown up hearing about, but had found a city full of high speed overpasses and skyscrapers. I had come to China looking for a glimpse of one of the world's oldest, most unique, diverse cultures, and had found Starbucks and Hyundai Elantras. I had come looking for small, smoky restaurants where old women would dish out steaming dumplings, and had instead found a posh hotel with chefs recommending western dishes. I had come in search of Chinese calligraphy, and had found printed signs on restrooms.

I had known before coming that this trip would not be on my terms. I would not be able to do most things I would have wanted to, seeing as I was with my parents, and they in a big group, where everyone had their own plans. I knew I would be bound and forced to do what they did, eat what they did, go where they did. Yet still I had come. I had come to China in search of China, and had somehow conspired to miss her completely.

And then, at that moment when my blog refused to open, something clicked. As I watched Firefox repeatedly fail to find the site, I could feel 'his' eyes upon me, following my every action. I knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was in the world's largest communist country, a red bastion which inspite of its opening up, still kept democracy away at an arms length. I knew I was in the land of the red march, the last emperor, the cultural revolution, Tiananmen Square, and looming above all, the ghost of Chairman Mao.

As Firefox failed for the umpteenth time, I felt Big Brother's eyes on me, and I knew that I was in China after all.

Walking in the Rain

2005-07-18T15:00:00.000-05:00

There came a time, now long gone,
When awoke I in surprise.
Forgotten had the day to dawn,
And the sun ne'er did rise.

The weather God, O fickle sprite,
A cruel blow had dealt.
For where the sun should have shone bright,
Now only rain did pelt.

The water fell in steady stream,
And the loud report of thunder,
To suggest to me it did seem,
To go out would be a blunder.

Yet time for me deigned not to wait,
Work on hand I could not scoff
And so bemoaning I my fate,
Through the deluge did set off.

Water through my clothes did seep,
A steady stream ne'er ending.
An umbrella cover could not keep,
Before the torrent bending.

When all at once I did espy,
Through my senses fain,
A glorious sight 'neath darkened sky,
A man walking in the rain.

No trace of hurry in his gait,
Neither anger nor despair,
The rain his walk did not abate,
Though it lay dripping from his hair.

And though lightning lightened not its blast,
And thunder loudly sounded,
His clothes were soaked down to the last
Yet his joy seemed more compounded.

No umbrella did shelter provide,
In no raincoat was he huddled,
And no shoe did protect him beside,
From road muddied and puddled.

To me it did appear thus,
No weight on his shoulders lay ,
All worry, complaint, care and fuss,
With rain was washed away.

His lips a smile did now adorn,
His joy unbounded I saw plain,
O! on that cold wet dreary morn,
I saw a man one with the rain.

Overhead, in many hues,
A rainbow did now arc.
A bold brush stroke in reds and blues,
On backdrop grey and stark.

And in the trees the birds did sing,
Their songs a-risin o'er the rain.
And O! 'tween clouds, a wonderous thing,
The sun was seen again.

And nature strived hard to delight,
But all her efforts were in vain.
For what could match up to the sight
A man walking in the rain.

My destination was at hand,
By now he'd disappeared,
But that image, like a burning brand,
Into my soul had seared.

So when I'm down, looking for a sign,
To guide me through mists of pain.
Outside my window, though the sun may shine,
I see a man walking,
I see a man walking,
I see a man walking in the rain.

Post Gratia Postis (Of Hanging Carrots)

2005-07-02T16:10:00.000-05:00

Lets take a hypothetical situation.

It's 2 in the night and my mom's calling me for supper.

So I don't have supper at 2 in the night. So I don't have supper at all. So what. I said hypothetical. Imagine it.

And she comes into my room and there I am, sitting on the bed, and this huge grin plastered silly across my face. Cheshire cat like. I could disappear and the grin would remain. That damn big.

And she asks what are you smiling about.

And I wonder what I should say?

******************************************

I could blame it on Jeffrey Archer's 'The Fourth Estate', which lies close at hand, but that would be a blatant lie. I am aware that there are many people who love his books, and I will be the first to admit that I haven't read too many of them (this is only my second Archer novel after 'Not a Penny More..'), but after this book I am frankly puzzled how anybody sees anything in him.

The book does nothing to me. Sure it's a good read. There is a wealth of details which smacks of careful research. The problem arises due to the fact that Archer's carefully constructed world is unfortunately inhabited by a bunch of cardboard cutouts. There are efforts at characterization, but as they slowly sink in a morass of cliches, one comes away with no feelings whatsoever towards any of the characters.

However, this discussion is really getting me nowhere. Any further and I'm going to find my feet stepping on one too many a toe more than I would care to step on. And that smile's still there....

******************************************

I could blame it on 'Batman Begins', which I happened to see today morning. That however poses a few problems.

Inspite of having Christopher Nolan at the helm, Batman Begins actually began where it was supposed to begin (it was a dark and stormy knight...), and barring flashbacks to Bruce's childhood, it surprisingly maintained a linear narrative. Nolan did brilliantly when he kept it simple and told his story, but as the film veered towards its inevitable CGI driven climax, it went off the tracks. There were some lovely touches- the hazy bat sign, the bat cave and the brilliant scene with Bruce standing among the bats, his initial awkwardness with the costume, and also some brilliant acting, particularly by Michael Caine. However, as the story became more ambitious, it lost the plot to some extent. The villains always threatened to threaten, but somehow never really achieved it. The scenes were all dark, but only to the extent that there was no light. The story however had none of the much hyped darkness. And I definitely wasn't helped by the distraction of microwaves only affecting pressurized water (is that possible?).

It was better than Joel Schumacher's efforts, which isn't saying much, and also perhaps better than Tim Burton's films, but I somehow am not able to really like the film. The only caveat I can offer is that I am not really a massive fan of the Batman mythos in the first place. Certainly not as big a fan as I am of the X-Men mythos, which would perhaps also explain why I still consider X-2 to be my favourite comic book inspired film.

And even X-2 couldn't possibly explain the smile....

******************************************

Well, I could always blame it on this. It's lying right next to me. In fact, almost throughout my stay in Delhi, one of Jug Suraiya's books has always been close at hand. Between 'Where on Earth am I' (his brilliant collection of travel essays), 'Juggling Act' (a self-chosen compilation of the best pieces from his column Jugular Vein) and 'Calcutta-A City Remembered' (a nostalgic walk through his favourite city), he has almost single handedly staved off the boredom threatening to engulf me.

I first heard of Jug Suraiya in the quizzing circuits of Calcutta. He was a veritable legend, and one who one fine day suddenly decided to quit quizzing and was never heard of again. Then I shifted to Delhi, and for the first time came across the Sunday Times. Inside I found 'Jugular Vein'- his weekly column. This was the first time that I actually read something written by him, and I loved it. From that day till today, the Times of India has been a regular fixture at home. Today, I still look forward to the Sunday TOI. And for all its features and articles, there is still one thing above all that draws me to it- Jugular Vein.

One of the first things I did after coming to Chennai was to make sure that the TOI was delivered to my room everyday. The paper that I get is unfortunately the Mumbai edition, as TOI is not printed in Chennai yet. This means that I get the paper one day late. Do I care? No way. Jug Suraiya on Monday mornings is just as good.

One of these days I'm going to turn up in front of House 90 in the National Media Centre complex in Gurgaon. I imagine Brindle will come barking to the gate to see who has come. And behind her will come Jug Suraiya. And I'll have no idea what to say to him. Just stand and stare at him in a star struck way. Maybe tell him how much happiness he has brought to me over the years. How much I have loved reading his column. Tell him about Salinger's idea about writers who one wants to meet, and how he heads my list.

Most probably I'll just apologize to him for the disturbance.

The smile, however, is still on my face , so we must explore other explanations.

******************************************

And so we come at last to the truth.

And are thankful that it is a hypothetical situation.

For it is not as hard to reveal the truth as to convince anyone as to how the hell it can be responsible for my smile.

There will be no explanations. Not from me atleast.

It got through twenty seven plus faintings, buckets of puke and readings all across the USA before someone finally taped it and put it on the net. And now I'm smiling.

The audio can be found on the net. In case you want to take the easy way out, read it here. It's not as much fun though. Not by a long way.

This then is my carrot. This then is why I am smiling.

It's good that this is a hypothetical situation. There's no way I could explain anything.

Don't tell me you weren't warned. This is, as the title suggests, a post for posts sake. Don't tell me that you wasted time reading this.

I'm still smiling.

'I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
the only thing that's real'

Trent Reznor plays on in my headphones.

I guess you will just have to forgive me this one post.

I just felt like destroying something beautiful.

In the Wake of the Wave

2005-06-18T14:55:00.000-05:00

In 1983 Columbia suddenly woke up to find that it was overrun by drug lords, and that the national coffers were alarmingly empty. This piece of news was relayed to FIFA who had surprisingly not been expecting it. Columbia had been scheduled to host the 1986 World Cup, but that dream was now going up in a puff of haze. In despair, FIFA's president turned to Mexico, host 16 years before, and begged them to help. Mexico duly agreed, and inspite of being rocked by severe earthquakes, created history as the first nation to host the World Cup twice.

However, much greater fame lay lurking around the corner for Mexico. A first round match at the great Azteca stadium, one of footballs great amphitheatres, saw Mexico take the lead against Belgium. In appreciation, although skeptics maintain it was actually to try and alleviate the hot and stuffy atmosphere in the stadium, a group of fans started doing exactly as their moniker suggested they should- fan themselves. However, being Mexican, they did it in style, in a synchronized manner, one after the other. Nearby fans joined in, and the name 'Mexico' became immortalized in football, and for that matter, sporting lore. The Mexican wave had been born.

Ask anyone to connect football and Brazil, and you'll inevitably get Pele or samba. Say Argentina and pat comes the reply- Maradona. Italy, and the answer is Catenachio. The Dutch gets you Total Football. Even Nigeria may get a mention of Super Eagles. Say Mexico, and nine times out of ten you will end up with the Mexican wave. What about the 'Tricolores', you may ask, and you will inevitably be greeted with quizzical looks. 'Who are they', you may be asked,' the Indian football team?'. And you depart, pausing to wave goodbye. Perhaps a Mexican wave would be fitting.

For a country which was one of the original members of FIFA, one of the 13 who participated in the first ever World Cup, and one whose team can boast of having appeared in 12 World Cups, including three quarter finals appearances, Mexico is one of footballs great enigmas. A team which on its day is capable of defeating all other teams, which has played some of the most memorable games in the World Cup, scoring some of the most memorable goals, which is the undisputed 'King of CONCACAF', and which above all is responsible for one of the most beautiful styles of football the world has seen, the 'Tricolores' are sadly often overshadowed by the wave which bears their country's name. And Mexico's greatest player, one of the most creative attackers the world has ever seen, now standing on the verge of retirement, is sadly forgotten, unlike other South and Central American stars like Valderrama, Zamorano, Diego Forlan, and for that matter, Dwight Yorke. As Mexico lines up for the Confederations Cup without him, I feel compelled to write a farewell post for one of my favourite footballers, and simultaneously talk about the Mexican football team, one of my favourite international teams, and one for which this great player served as a talismanic figure over the last decade.

Viva Cuauhtemoc Blanco.

The first time I watched Mexico play was in the 98 World Cup in France. They were in a tough group including the Dutch, Belgium and South Korea. In their first match, South Korea went a goal up against them. Then, a diminutive looking Mexican forward started to take charge, and soon the tide turned. The Koreans had no answer to the onslaught, losing the game 3-1. In their next two games, the Mexicans found themselves two goals behind early on in the match, and each time came back with a mesmeric brand of football to tie the games. Germany finally stopped them with an ugly display of defensive football, but not before Mexico had dazzled with some brilliant play, dominating the possession and winning the hearts of all the spectators. It was football like I had never seen before, and I loved it.

Every country has a unique style of play, which is what makes international football a treat to watch. The Brazilians depend on flair and individual artistry, the Italians defend grimly, the Dutch play their Total football, France tries to dominate the midfield, Germany are doggedly opportunistic, and so on. Today however, with increasing club football, foreign coaches and several other changes, these distinctions between the sides are blurring, and every country tends to play pretty much similar games. Mexico's contribution to world football is the intricate passing game, of which they are the undisputed masters. Although other teams also play short passing games, Mexico's style is unique. Their game is characterized by continuous movement of the players, excellent understanding between them, and long sequences of short and accurate passes in rapid succession as they try to break down the opposition defence. In the hands of the Mexican team, this strategy is an extremely potent weapon, and when in full flow, can cut an opposition defence to shreds.

So why is Mexico not ranked among the worlds footballing elite? The problem arises after the opposition defence has been split, in delivering the coup de grace. It is here where Mexico lacks the killer instinct, the opportunistic eye for goal, which is the hallmark of a great team. The Mexican's play the game with a jovial attitude. For them, it is quite often the fun of playing it which matters more than the result. In fact, Mexico's coach is supposed to have mentioned after their loss to Germany in 98 that, 'The bad news is that we lost, but the good news is that we had fun and played beautiful football', or something to that effect. In the 2002 World Cup, Mexico again played some exciting football, topping their group over favourites Italy. It was in the match against Italy that Mexico scored one of the most breathtaking goals that I have ever seen. The replay of the goal, starting from the initial clearance from defence, was more than two minutes long. The entire Mexican midfield and forward line was stationed in a sort of a semicircle around the opposition penalty area, with players making occasional runs into the area. Blanco, like a conductor, wandered around orchestrating the move. The Mexicans made more than 12 passes, each accurately delivered, inspite of pressure from the Italian defence, and each pass more threatening than the previous one. They found unmarked players and open spaces with ease against some of the world's greatest defenders. Finally the ball came to Blanco, who chipped the ball over the defensive wall right into the path of a Borgetti run. Borgetti met the ball in the air at the near corner, and through a brilliant header, sent it into the far corner of the goal. The defenders and the goalkeeper hadn't moved. (After much searching I was unable to find a video of this goal. The last 2 passes have been depicted here)

And then, after all their heroics, Mexico went on to meet USA in the 2nd round, dominated the match, played brilliantly, and lost 2-0.

Another reason for Mexico's low profile in world football is that most of their players play in the Mexican League, and so do not become superstars in European club football. Of late some players, Rafael Marquez in particular, have reversed the trend, but most of Mexico's top players are still relatively unknown.

Cuauhtemoc Blanco also played for sometime in Real Vallodollid, but without much success. He however is undoubtedly the greatest player Mexico has ever produced. A local hero, he has for long been the primary creative force behind the team's game. He was also one of their most potent goal scorers, and along with Luis Hernandes, was the main reason for all their success in the last decade. A passionate and often outspoken player, he has forever walked a tightrope on the disciplinary front, and has had several, very public fallouts with his managers. Yet, his sheer talent ensured that his game was never affected by all this, and over the last decade he was undoubtedly the first name on the team sheets for every game. When he played, anything seemed possible. He unfortunately never achieved the recognition which his talent merited, for he, like the game's other great players, could single handedly change a match within a matter of moments. In his prime, he was unstoppable.

And although Blanco may not have achieved the fame of a Pele or a Maradona or even a Valderrama, but he has a unique distinction that no other football player has achieved. For Cuauhtemoc Blanco is, to the best of my knowledge, the only player who has had a dribbling manoeuvre named after him.

It was in France 98 when the world was first introduced to Blanco and his special manoeuvre. Blanco had the ball and was being closed down by two defenders, when all of a sudden he did something which had never been seen before. As he ran towards the two defenders, he grasped the ball between his feet, and hopped between them with it. The defenders were too surprised to de anything. So were the commentators, troubled as it was by the task of saying Cuauhtemoc. Some dubbed it the bunny hop, others the 'Blanco bounce'. However, as he proceeded to do this move several times during the tournament, it was found that the Mexican fans already had a name for it. Thus was born the 'Cuauhtemina'.

Yet inspite of his trademark move, and all his skills, Blanco, like the rest of the Mexican team, has been sadly forgotten in the great tapestry of world football. And today, as Mexico takes part in the Confederations Cup, many changes have taken place in their style of play. Under the influence of their new coach, and a new Brazilian playmaker in Zinha, Mexico has started playing a more direct game. However there are times when they revert to their old intricate passing game. And one can not but feel at such moments that somewhere in Mexico City, Cuauhtemoc Blanco is bunny hopping around in delight at seeing this. Or perhaps, he is doing a Mexican wave.

The Revenge of the Shit

2005-06-12T15:10:00.000-05:00

You couldn't really miss The Revenge of the Sith, as hard as you tried. It was everywhere. Trailers on every channel on T.V, posters on every wall, advertisements in every newspaper, light sabers in every hand, bad Darth Vader breathing impressions on every breath. Then, as the day of release dawned, all hell broke loose. The news channels started reporting on all night vigils by people wielding plastic sticks, the History Channel started showing biographies of Lucas and everyone else involved, Coulthard drove in a 200mph billboard, and finally, the Cartoon Network, so often the one sane voice in a world going mad, started airing crazy Star Wars cartoons. I held out as long as I could, but finally I gave in, and somehow forced Keerthi to give in as well. And so we set off to watch it.

If you are looking for a review of the movie, complimentary or otherwise, then this is not the place. This won't be much of a review, although undoubtedly I, at some point during this article, will feel the necessity to dish out phrases like 'weak characterization' and 'insipid acting' and their like which are the bread and butter of movie criticism. This however is much more of a personal article, a 'Siddhartha and Star Wars' sort of thing. For this really wasn't a very ordinary series of movies. It was a tale about a long time ago, in a Galaxy far far away.

And so we will go a long time back, to a place far far away. Calcutta to be precise, in those days when Kolkata had not yet occurred to the kindly Marxists as a way of rekindling Bengali pride. And somewhere in the south of this city, a little kid got on with the business of growing up. And one day, this amazing thing called a VCR turned up in his house, and his father told him that they could now sit at home and watch any movie they liked any time they liked, instead of going to cinema halls or waiting for kindly old Doordarshan. Which was a pretty big deal, for I don't think he had ever gone to a cinema hall, and Doordarshan had this odd habit of showing very serious movies in unheard of languages with subtitles, of which he could never make out a thing.

There are very few movies that I can clearly remember having seen as a child. Sholay and Gandhi I remember quite well, for each and every national holiday would see them being screened on Doordarshan. Two bengali movies which I very clearly remember watching and falling in love with are 'Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne' and 'Sonar Kella'. The only english movie( and I am not counting Gandhi here, it was dubbed anyway) which I remember seeing from those days was Star Wars. 'A New Hope', to those who are particular about it, although I never knew of this title till very recently. It was always Star Wars to me. It always will be.

Star Wars was the first movie cassette which I owned. Today, surrounded by LANs and torrents and divx and the rest, this may not seem like a big thing, but at that time it was. It meant that I could see it as many times as I wanted, whenever I wanted to, with no fear of having to return it to the parlour at the end of the week. And I did not waste this privilege. I have lost count of how many times I saw the movie, but somehow it never lost its charm. Many other cassettes came, and then I started going to see movies in halls quite regularly, but still there was something about Star Wars that kept drawing me back to see it. I loved everything about it, the opening text, the way Darth Vader talked, the robots, Chewbacca, the music, Obi-Wan, lightsabers,... everything. My favourite scene used to be the one in which Luke comes out of his home and looks out onto the desert, and sees the two suns. That killed me everytime-the two suns. Everything else looked just like a desert on Earth, and there, in the background, were these two amazing suns. This was what movies were all about to me-imagination, distant lands, situations which real life would never throw at you. This was fantasy, and I loved it.

I didn't know about the sequels to Star Wars for quite a long time. Luckily for me, a friend of mine (who I think also presented me with the original cassette, although I can't remember clearly) had them. I still remember going over to her house and watching them with her, on consecutive days, if I remember clearly. I loved them as much as the first one, if not more. I saw them again many years later when they were remastered and rereleased, and was pleased to see I remembered quite a bit, inspite of having seen them only once, and that too many years before. But then, you can't really forget them-they were that good!

And then came The Phantom Menace, and then The Attack of the Clones, and finally The Revenge of the Sith. And I, Star Wars fan that I was, was supposed to have been overjoyed and jumping up and down with fake lightsabers and gone to the hall and seen them, and loved them. But that is not how it happened. Nowhere close in fact. And now, after the much anticipated ending of the saga, I still do not feel anything, but a vague sense of letdown, and anger, at what I have seen. And so this post.

The original Star Wars films, even without the remastering, were masterpieces of special effects. Barring 2001-A Space Odyssey( which was head and shoulders ahead of its time), I don't recall having seen any other film from the period that has such advanced visual effects. Today however, in this post-matrix, post-LOTR age, the envelope has been pushed far far ahead, and Lucas seems to have( perhaps very literally too) lost the plot. He has tried hard, but racing scenes and large Jedi battles don't really come up to the levels set by Matrix and the rest. And in Revenge of the Sith, an all out effects battle has resulted in them becoming more of a joke. Every scene is saturated with millions and millions of spaceships in the background, or with huge volcanic lava flows, or swarms of battling creatures, or with some other pointless flourish which eventually amounts to nothing. The CGI in the film is one huge McGuffin, and almost successfully drowns out the insipid storyline. On top of that, the scene transitions have been done terribly with checkerbox outs and wipes which give it a feeling of having been done on Powerpoint (thanks Keerthi). This is perhaps supposed to be a throwback to the older movies, but is frankly quite pointless.

And then comes the storyline, and often the distinct lack of it. Star Wars had been the great film that it was not only because of its effects, but to a large extent because of its story. And by story I mean not only the Jedi-Sith mythos, but the more human stories that made up the original films-of Luke growing up, and learning who he was, of Obi-Wan, and Hans Solo, and Leia, and their romance, and of Luke's training with Yoda, and his learning of the true identity of Darth Vader, and many many other stories which unfolded in this great theater that Lucas created. Star Wars, like most great fantasies, was a retelling of the immortal human stories in an altered setting. It was a Greek drama, set in a galaxy far far away. Inexplicably, the same George Lucas somehow conspired to come up with three very weak storylines for the prequels. The mother son separation in the first part was terribly handled, the story of Anakin's mother's death was in effect a recycling of a plot which had been much better handled in A New Hope and the love story between Anakin and Padme, inspite of some decent acting( which is one thing the prequels do not lack in the least), never really amounted to anything. The power struggles were amateurishly portrayed, and finally Anakin's much hyped transformation into Darth Vader was almost non-existent.

The Star Wars prequels were terrible. I know this is a pretty strong comment, and that quite a few people I know have liked them, but unfortunately I can not seem to find a way out of this conclusion. They were watchable, perhaps even entertaining in parts, but that is not what I expected from them. Star Wars meant a lot more to me, and I am sure to many other people. And that is what angers me. The prequels are effectively trivia digests, in order to wrap up loose ends in the saga. As stand alone films, they are terrible. Try taking someone who has never seen Star Wars to see one of them and see what they make of them. The third one is undoubtedly the best of the lot, but that is mainly because of the fact that we want to see how everything falls into place and integrates into the original trilogy. Take that away from the movie, and you are left with...nothing.

And so, at the conclusion of this great saga, I feel nothing but letdown and anger. For this surely is not what it was supposed to be about. The over-commercialization, the floods of merchandise, the race to beat opening weekend profits, this wasn't the Star Wars I loved. I am very grateful to Lucas for his original films, and do not begrudge him any of his fortune, but surely Star Wars was more than a money making franchise? Artistically, at least for me, the saga ended with The Return of the Jedi. What the prequels attempt to do is cash in on our feelings for the originals, and for this I am angry.

Star Wars was a very integral part of my childhood. I have since come a long way, but I still cherish the memories I have of the trilogy, of watching it at home, imitating the actors, humming the music, and seeing the sequels at my friends place, with whom I subsequently lost contact till, coincidentally, the very night after I watched The Revenge of the Sith. As memories of my childhood came rushing back, I realized what the originals had meant to me, and how the prequels really made me feel. I do not want memories of seeing these prequels take over and relegate the more cherished ones to be forgotten. I wish I could, like Holmes, shed those memories which contribute nothing to my life. Or even better, taking a cue from what is my favourite science fiction film of the recent past, I wish I could go along to Dr. Howard Mierzwiak and get all my memories of the Star Wars prequels erased. They simply aren't worth it.

Bird on a Wire

2005-06-07T14:28:00.000-05:00

Only moments before I had been half asleep. Now I lay wide awake, every nerve on edge, every sense strained, every muscle taut. Like a moment in a dream when you actually fall off the cliff, and are suddenly jerked back into reality, a cold sweat drenching your bed. None of the rubbing eyes stretching hands routine. Like a motion of the seconds hand- now here and at the next instant another second's gone. No hanging about here. A knife edge- sleep and wakefulness, life and death.

Ok, this will be a bit hard to explain. I do not really have the luxury of diagrams or pictures or any other sort of visual aid. A few words, and a fervent prayer that they'll be enough for you to visualize what I'm talking about. It's not too hard really. Odd perhaps, unusual, but not hard to imagine.

There's a window, set in a small rectangular frame. Small window, single frame, nothing special about it. Set in the corner of a bathroom, looking out onto a sheer wall, behind which my neighbours live their lives, unseen by me, and I unseen by them. Not much of a view, a grey wall. It's for the ventilation, they said, when they installed it. Whoever heard of single framed windows in bathrooms? But then again, it's on the first floor, and looking out onto a wall. Nothing can see through it, nothing but the birds, that is.

It had sounded like a door being opened. The sharp click of a bolt being withdrawn, the slow creaking of hinges as they reluctantly gave way. There's really no other sound like it. You could be sitting blindfolded in a room, but you'd always know when the door is opened. Or, as in my case, you could be asleep, but you would know if a door had been opened. Not soundly asleep, of course, but half asleep, just about to dream whatever you were going to dream of that night. Dreams don't have much of sound really. They are pretty poor substitutes for life, all noiseless and colourless. Life in greyscale. And then somewhere a door opens, and you're wide awake.

The window swings wide open for ventilation. And to shut it there's this piece of string, one end attached to the end of the window, and the other end attached to the frame, so that it can be easily pulled shut. Below the window lies a ledge. And on the ledge a nest. In the nest, a couple of eggs. And hovering around the nest, the pigeon who's responsible for it. Nothing special so far.

I lay awake in my bed, ears straining to hear the smallest of sounds. I had opened my eyes for a while, but there wasn't much point to it. The room was dark. Somewhere outside the open bedroom window, there burnt a streetlight, stray rays from which somehow permeated through, casting a greyish hue over objects in the room. The clock on the wall lay in the shadows, so I had no way of making out what time it was. It must have been quite late though, for there wasn't any sound to be heard, apart from the relentless ticking of the seconds hand. And yet I could have sworn I had heard a door being opened.

And now it gets a bit strange. One end of the string, the end attached to the part of the window which opens out, has come loose. The other end is still firmly attached to the frame. The loose end has been picked up by the pigeon, and assimilated into its nest. The string is long enough, so it is still slack. But one end is firmly embedded in the nest. And the other end tied to the frame. And so it lay as I came in to bathe one day and first observed it.

The dry summer air lay a silent and unmoving spectator. Outside, the leaves of the trees were as though carved into the still night. All animal life had long succumbed to the drowsy summer heat. As I lay in my bed, my mind started to play tricks on me. All of a sudden, I seemed to detect footsteps on the ceiling right above my head. I tried shifting my head from side to side, but there was no further sound. The seconds hand kept up its relentless ticking. Time seemed to move in short bursts, for an instant unsure of what it was supposed to do and then all of a sudden remembering and running onto the next moment with a sharp click. The clicks were ok after a while, when one got used to them. It was the pauses that were terrifying.

It wasn't too wide a ledge, the one on which the nest lay perched unsteadily. And a drop of one floor straight down to the grey courtyard below. The pigeon hovered around, too scared to come any closer, frightened out of its wits by the sudden appearance of my face in the window. The eggs lay cosily in the centre of the nest.

Terror seeped from my brain to all my muscles and finally out through my skin to the surrounding sheets. There really wasn't anything I could do but wait and listen. It was just a single door opening, it could have been due to a million possible, and entirely harmless, reasons. It would be quite stupid if I decided to go and check what had happened, in the process disturbing everybody else. And so I lay in bed listening to the silence around me. The ticking of the clock I no longer paid much attention to, consigning it to the background. My imagination now kicked in. Newspaper headlines floated past- Robbers kill family in so and so colony...Armed dacoits leave trail of blood...And I lay there and thought about all that I was and all I had done and not done. All that I had enjoyed and suffered. All that I had lived, and how in a moment it could all end. In a motion of the seconds hand- now here and at the next instant gone. A knife edge- life and death.

Have you ever filled a sink full of water, and then pulled the stopper, and seen the water sucked out into the drain? Have you hung around to watch as it eddies around, slowly swirling till it's all gone? I picked up the string and felt it tightening. The nest swayed gently as the slack disappeared.

The world seemed to gradually turn to shades of grey. The seconds hand now seemed to move noiselessly. Time stopped its jerky movements and started to flow, and then slowed down, and finally stagnated till all that was left was the moment, like a fly trapped in amber, constant and changeless. And then I saw the string for the first time, stretching straight above me. And I heard the footsteps approaching, and a face seemed to appear at the window far above me, and a hand came out and held the string.

And I wondered what prevented me from pulling it.

Nights in Black Caffeine

2005-04-24T04:00:00.000-05:00

Recently I came across the blog of friend of mine, who passed out of IIT last year, and joined IIM B. Along with another friend who followed the same route, he is perhaps right on top of the list of people I knew in my first year, and miss the most. As that time of the year comes around again, when another batch passes out, and another bunch of friends you had made scatters away in the winds, perhaps to be lost forever, I am sorely tempted to write posts eulogizing the virtues of those who are passing out, and drowning in a sense of nostalgia. What prevents me from doing so however is the fact that my end sems are on hand. That however brings me back to Baada's blog, and a certain post he had written on pre-exam insomnia, which struck me as being incredibly apt for the moment. Now I do not think I am capable of writing general posts on such matters, and definitely not capable of producing poetry like he has. However, my goddam ego is quite irked by the fact that I haven't written for some time. Hence this post.....
(forgive me reader, for I know not what I write....'tis the effects of late night mugging!)
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I think it was around eleven at night, but I can't really be sure. I know it was before twelve, for Gurunath was still open. And it was definitely after nine, for that was when I had dinner, but figuring out the exact time was beyond me. Mugging has this unique feature of distorting time, till it becomes so convoluted that it ceases to exist, ashamed by its own distorted appearance. Watches malfunction, clocks become erratic, and nobody has any idea what hour of the night it is. Gurunath however closes on time, and that brings me back to my initial assumption that it was eleven.

The three of us, Cavi, TS and I, were sitting and talking, as the reader may have already fathomed from preceding remarks, at Gurunath. Now I could have said that in a way more simplistic manner, but mugging has this unique feature of distorting language, till it becomes so convoluted that it ceases to adhere to rules, liberated by a sense of its own flexibility. Dictionaries confabulate, spell checks switch to Swahili, and nobody knows what a preposition is. Conversation is however unimpeded, and that brings me back to my initial scene of the three of us talking.

Now I'm sure you think that there is absolutely no way in which I can use that again, and unfortunately for you, I take that up as a challenge. For mugging has this unique feature of distorting humour, till it becomes so convoluted that it ceases to be funny, stymied by its own repetitiveness. Jokes elicit no laughter, punchlines weaken, and nobody knows when one is supposed to laugh. And that brings me back to the three of us sitting at Gurunath at eleven at night.

But wait, hold on a second. A little diversion is called for. So we go back, a long time back, to 1520, when a Franciscan Friar by the name of Matteo di Bassi became convinced that he was not keeping good habits. Bassi, using that divine vision that is possessed by members of the monk class, somehow figured out that the habit worn by the Franciscans was different from that worn by St. Francis himself, and decided to redesign it, thereby forming a new monastic order. The order prided itself on its austere lifestyle, and came to be known as the 'poorest of the poor', although at all times they remained conscious of the fact that they were formed on the question of an apparel dispute. They were a magnet for non Christians and spearheaded the 'Counter-Reformation', and their numbers swelled, the reason for which many believe is their sense of style and their snazzy uniforms. Naturally their success led to many being jealous of them, and the worst insult came when a new species of monkey was named after them, in mockery of their habit which the monkey's appearance closely resembled. Yet their pointed black cowl and brown habit also inspired the naming of one of humanities greatest inventions, one which can be said to be responsible for most of the scientific advancements, and for that matter, advancements in all fields of human endeavour. These were the monks of the Cappuchin order.

Late night mugging is impossible without Cappuccino. Beginners do not venture beyond white coffee, and there is a small group who swear by weed, but the majority of nocturnal muggers live on cappuccino. The three of us were no different. And so we sat at Gurunath (and you will doubtlessly remember that it was eleven at night), sipping our cups of Cappuccino, and groaning at the thought of how much portions we had left to study. And then something happened. And so I write this post.

For those who are unaware of Cappuccino, it is necessary to tell that the beverage, if drunk as it is, is exceedingly bitter. Now I do not claim to be an expert in this field, but it suffices to say that the drink we get from the Nescafe stall is pretty much undrinkable in the form in which it is given. In order to make it palatable, it is necessary to add sugar cubes, with emphasis on the plural. Masochists pump for one, seasoned drinkers prefer two, but the majority of us require three in order to drink it. Now I had drunk Cappuccino many times before, each time with three cubes of sugar in it. But for the first time, I actually observed the way in which the sugar dissolves, and was astounded. What will follow is going to be a description of the same.

If you place the cube on its face on the surface of the coffee, then it floats for a few seconds, with just its top face visible on the surface of the coffee. It seems to look plaintively at you, begging you to rescue it from its brown, liquidy grave. However the forces of gravity and the dissolving power of the hot liquid are too strong, and it slowly sinks into the black depths of the cup. For a few seconds more, it proudly maintains its cubical shape, but it is constantly corroded from the sides by the hot coffee, till it finally gives up the fight and dissolves away into sweet oblivion. Now perhaps it was the fact that I hadn't slept for a long time, or that my mind was saturated with circuits and equations, but this entire act seemed to me to be symbolic of our own lives. We too start of with proper, predefined shapes, and great potentiality, but as we dissolve in the black dregs of the world, we too slowly, while spreading our sweetness around, lose our individuality and dissolve into obscurity. We do not exist by ourselves, but only as a small grain of sugar in an infinity which is this coffee cup world of ours. That's what we are-dissolving sugar cubes, buffeted on all sides by the forces of this world, spreading joy around, while internally crumbling into nothingness.

So enthralled was I by this discovery, that I must have continued observing it for some five minutes, by the end of which some six cubes had dissolved in the murky blackness of my cup. The coffee, needless to say, was quite undrinkable.

My Left Feet

2005-04-04T01:23:00.001-05:00

'Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse.
Still, it's so much clearer.
I forgot my shirt at the water's edge.
The moon is low tonight.
Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.'
Nightswimming - R.E.M

I was sitting in Ravi's room at 9 in the evening, talking to him and surfing the net, when, all of a sudden, Semi walked in with a football under his arm. "Two on two", he said, "Amrut's also coming". You didn't need to invite us twice.

Ok, so this is not really about night swimming. I just happen to like the song. But night footballing too deserves a quiet night. And that's what this posts about.

I don't really know when I first heard of the beautiful game, but I do know that the first team I knew of was East Bengal. For one growing up in Kolkata, it was almost impossible not to hear of them. It is one of the things that all Bengalis inherit from their parents, apart from genetic traits. They inherit the club they support. In Liverpool, cases of Reds supporters coming from Blue families and vice versa are well known. In Kolkata, it is impossible. For the club system in Kolkata is formed on much more deeper lines. Those families who are originally from East Bengal support East Bengal, the West Bengalis support Mohun Bagan. The Muslims support Sporting. I don't really know who supports Agragami though. No one I think.

So I was born with the Red and Gold emblazoned on my mind. And as I grew older, the love for the beautiful game took deep roots in me. However most of Kolkata lacks those wide open spaces that are so essential to football, so there was very little football playing in my childhood. And so every time I played was a memorable occasion. Later, when I went to Delhi, I played occasionally, but still pretty infrequently. And after joining IIT, I played occasionally, but not as often as I would have liked. Still, every time I played, it felt great.

There is a limit upto which one can support Indian football sides. With the advent of satellite channels, our TV screens were inundated with a wave of foreign football superstars. Pele I had heard of. Who hadn't? But the Maradonas and Baggios and Linekars of the world were new to me. For one brought up on a staple diet of a bunch of Indians rolling around in the dirt in Salt Lake Stadium, this new football took me aback. The sight of Roger Milla dancing at the corner post was like nothing I had seen before. I was hooked.

With the passage of time, I became a fan of this Dutch footballer, who I thought was the best around. His silken skills were like nothing I had seen before. He was my footballing idol, the one player I really really wanted to play like. Soon I decided to become a supporter of whatever club he played for. Some time later I discovered his club, and started following their football. That's how I came to like Dennis Bergkamp and Arsenal.

Coming back to our match now. The teams were decided. I was with Semi while Amrut was with Ravi. Then the game began. As was to be expected in a two-a-side format, the game never really reached any sublime heights. It consisted of a succession of attacks, and a distinct lack of defence. Still, we continued to play without a care in the world. The ball oscillated from one goal to another, and we ran after it like men possessed. Strategies were formulated, fancy footwork exhibited, and breath-taking goals were scored. Above, the moon shone in the sky. The only other light was from some of the hostel rooms, where the door was open. Sometimes some people passed by the quadrangle, shaking their heads in disbelief. But we played on. Sweat dripped from our brows, legs refused to run any further. Attacks got shorter as defences wilted. The moon climbed higher in the sky.

I don't know how long we played. But it sure felt like a long time.

I will soon fly with the raven again. And he will show me the world from his viewpoint. I will see what he has to show to me. And I will think about it. And write about it. And it will feed on me, and I on it. But not tonight. Tonight I'll dream of the red and golden. I will run amok on the playing fields in my mind. I will pass, and tackle, and dribble, and shoot. And goals will be scored. Glorious goals. And the red and gold will march forward. The firebrand will be raised high. And I will live it. Tonight I will not fly with the raven. Tonight I will dream.

It felt perfect, the moonlight, the company of friends, the wind on my face, the sweat dripping off my hair, the ball at my feet. It felt perfect, like it had felt so many times before. Life dissolved and faded out. It was just me, and the others, four posts, and a ball. This was the beautiful game. And I was playing it.

I hadn't played for almost a month, but there are some things that never change. I knew it wouldn't. I felt it as soon as I got onto the quadrangle, as I first touched the ball, as I kicked it goalward, and watched it miss.

Some things never change. Those silken skills were still not mine. Far from it.

But what the heck. It was fun. It was a lot of fun.

The Banshee's Wail

2005-03-27T01:33:00.000-06:00

It was around 11 when Amrut first came in with the kitten. Ravi, TS and I were studying in Ravi's room when all of a sudden he burst in with the kitten and put it on my lap. "There's something wrong with it", he said, "It's been mewing continuously for the last hour or two, and refusing to leave my lap". I looked down at it, but couldn't spot anything wrong. The plaster on its leg was a tad dirtier, and the expression in its eyes perhaps more mournful than usual, but apart from that, it seemed alright. Perhaps it was the strain of studying for next day's test. Anyway, that is not where this post starts. For that we have to go back many years, to ancient Ireland, when a long haired maiden dressed in white first made her appearance in the deep forests, and when her cry was first heard, and entered into the mind of man forever.

The kitten had broken its legs a few days back, and thanks to the efforts of our hostel mess secretary, had been treated by a vet, and its leg had been put in plaster. It had also been put on some medication. On his return from the vet, our mess sec scouted around for people to take care of the kitten. He very wisely settled on Amrut for this duty.

The kitten then took up lodging outside Amrut's room, in a box which Amrut had specially made for it, complete with pillow and bedsheet. Over the next few days, Amrut made sure it got its medicines on time. The rest of us tried to ensure it got a regular supply of food and water. Slowly it started to regain some strength in its leg, and began to walk about a little. Many a pleasant hour was spent playing with the kitten in the box. That is how matters stood when Amrut came into Ravi's room with the kitten.

In the last two semesters, our hostel has played host to no fewer than nine different kittens. Of the first four, only one survived, but disappeared during the holidays. Of the next five, two disappeared within a month, the third sometime later. One is still around, prowling around in the mess for leftovers. Then what exactly, you may ask, is so special about the last one, that I write an entire post about it? To find the answer, I'll have to go back to Ireland, and the woman in white.

I don't really know too much about the myth of the Banshee. I don't know when it originated. I don't know if there is any written account of it. I came across it in some Discovery Channel program many years ago, and more recently, I came across it in Harry Potter (Chamber of Secrets, I think...). Thus, whatever I say about them in this post should not be taken as true facts. The banshee of this post is my banshee, my personal ideas about them.

What I do know is that the Irish believe that it is bad luck to hear the wail of the banshee, and to see one. But we aren't talking about any ordinary, do-badly-in-tests bad luck here. No, it is much darker. The banshee is no black cat. Its appearance, and its wail, are linked to something way more specific than just plain old bad luck.

The banshee is a portent of death. He who sees the banshee, will die himself. He who hears its wail will soon be deprived of a dear one. That is the myth of the banshee.

I remember we finished studying around 3 at night. I was walking back to my room, when I suddenly saw the kitten, sitting in a niche in the wall. As I went near, it turned to face me, and gave a single plaintive mew. And immediately knew that it wouldn't live through the night.

Have you ever had thoughts about death? Have you ever seen the death of dear ones in your dreams, and woken up in a cold sweat? Has the thought ever crossed your mind that someone you know is about to pass away? Now, have you ever wondered what would happen if all these feelings were to suddenly come true? Like the old Chinese curse which wishes that all your dreams be fulfilled. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if that happened?

I've been pretty lucky so far in my life to have never come close to death. Even the dead kitten was removed early in the morning, and I only came to know about it from the mess sec around tea time. Perhaps it is this fact, one for which I am very thankful, which caused me to react such to this incident. The only thing that keeps those fears at bay is the fact that they never come true. Now what if one fine day, they do?

You can argue that I knew about the kittens death because its health must have been pretty bad, and it was in a pathetic state. You can argue that it was merely a matter of chance that it happened, that a simple play of probability has assumed gigantic proportions when viewed through the lens of hindsight. You can argue that it is silly to have vague superstitions about wailing maidens and portents of death. You can argue that I am putting way too much emphasis on the death of one single small kitten. Perhaps you are right. In fact, almost certainly you are right. That however is not the point.

Strip me of all my reasoning and logic, and what you have is a human being, with the same emotions, the same feelings, and the same fears as any other human being. And to say the truth, I didn't really have any major reaction on hearing about the kittens death. I guess the news worked more slowly, and more deep in my brain, and so I find myself writing this post.

Those who are afraid of injections know that the greatest fear hits when you see the syringe, and in the moments when it is filled, for you know what is about to happen next. Or a person who is afraid of flying has the most violent reactions just before take-off, when the plane is taxing down the runway. These aren't very good examples, but what I would like to portray through them is the fact that the portent of an impending event is often way more terrifying than the event itself. That is why I have such feelings about the kittens death. Not just because it died, but because I knew it would. It is that which terrifies me.

I have known about the impeding death of a fellow living being, and seen it die. I have heard the wail of the banshee. I have not really changed dramatically due to it. There are no perceptible effects of this on my present mood. But I guess such things never really fade away completely. Somewhere, deep down, a scar has been etched, a fear has been branded into my very psyche. It is a fear greater than any I have known before.

Interview

2005-03-03T11:30:00.000-06:00

This one took a long time coming.....

This post was conceived last October, soon after the occurrence of the events mentioned below. However, a small technicality delayed its posting till now. The title itself is a tribute to Mrinal Sen, who would quite easily have been the greatest director of his generation had he not been born in the era of one Mr. Satyajit Ray. Interview is not one of my favourite Mrinal Sen movies, but it is the first one I saw, and it reminds me a lot of Pratidwandi, which is my favourite Ray film.

That's enough about Bengali films for the moment.

Many years ago, when I studied in St. James, Kolkata, I was very fond of formal clothes, particularly of ties. My school tie was one of the most beautiful pieces of clothing I had ever seen, with it's brilliant colour scheme, and exquisitely monogrammed school logo, and I loved wearing it. Every morning I spent around five minutes trying to get the perfect knot. Triangular, not too small, yet not bulbous, with a small dimple at the bottom vertex, the quintessential double knot. Also the length, a few centimeters below the belt, had to be perfect. When all this was successfully accomplished, I would put on the top button of my shirt and tighten my tie, ensuring it was centered and perfectly balanced. And in my mind I would fantasize about bystanders on the road turning around and looking at me and my tie, and knowing I was a Jacobean, and proud of it.

And then came the transfer to Delhi. And me and my school tie were separated. My new school handed me a green rag and asked me to pretend it was a tie, that too, only in winter. But I knew better. And the memory of my old school tie was still fresh in my mind. So, within a month, I had abandoned my new tie, and had instead tried to cultivate that nonchalance and informality in my uniform, which is the predominant ethos of DPS RK Puram. And with time, old habits were forgotten, top buttons were loosened, shirts half tucked out, ties relegated to the cupboard. I had become the quintessential Dipsite.

Well.....as quintessential as I could.

Anyway, by the time I turned up in IIT M, I had a deep dislike for formal and semi-formal clothing. And that is where this tale begins, with me tugging at my collar and trying to convince myself that I didn't look like an absolute idiot in a shirt and trousers, and shuddering at the very thought of having to wear shoes.

I had no idea what the Inlaks Foundation was. I still don't. A few moments before my interview, Lokesh told me a few basic facts about it, so that I wouldn't go in looking like a complete fool. As soon as I came out, I forgot. And it has stayed forgotten. All I knew was that they were offering a scholarship, and everybody around, including my parents and most of the other people chosen for the interview, seemed to think it was a big deal. I had no idea about it. Seriously!

They had sent me a letter, on account of my having a good CG, and had asked me to come along for an interview. And quite a few people I knew had been asked too. The interview was on a Sunday, in the Dean of Academics'' office. That was all I knew.

That and the fact that I would have to go in formals. And so I stood in front of the mirror, wondering whether I would have to wear shoes. Eventually I didn't, but I did comb my hair and wear a shirt and all that sort of thing. Semi didn't have a shirt though, so we went along to Venkat's room in order to clothe Semi. And I think he hated it as much. And he wore slippers too. Thank God for Semi!

Clothed in our formals, we trooped off to the Acad Block. In our hands were files which contained the total achievements of our short lives reduced to a mass of Xeroxed sheets. Semi's informed that he was a Gold medallist in many an Olympiad, and also the foremost table tennis player in his old school. Mine stated that I quizzed a bit, but didn't do too much besides. In the Acad Block, we met up with other batchmates of ours, who were all similarly attired, and were carrying their life's achievements in their hands, and wondering what the hell they were doing there. Lokesh decided to educate us all a bit about the Inlaks Foundation. And then the first candidate was called in.

By the time my turn came, some four students had finished their interviews, and had come out and described the ordeal. And with each narration, I got more and more panicky. In my mind, I formed a mental image of a group of six or eight professors sitting in a semicircle, pouring over my past life, looking for flaws, and waiting to bombard me with questions on Superstring Theory and Topology and what have you. So it was with some apprehension that I entered the Dean's office.

I don't really remember too much about the interview. It was a long time ago, and much water has flowed under the bridge ever since. For about two months after the interview, I could remember it completely, like a movie playing back in my mind. Then it faded, and blurred at the edges. All that is left now is a hazy recollection, and even that threatens to crumble away with time. I write what I remember, for I will soon forget it. Life's like that. You experience, you recall your experiences, and then you experience something else, and the old memories fade. What is written is more permanent. And so I write.

I started of with a 'good morning', but was greeted with a 'speak up, we can't hear you'. Thinks improved subsequently as we started to talk about quizzing, and Douglas Adams, and such topics. To my surprise, most of the professors seemed to be enjoying this. Then one of them asked what wanted to do in life. After some thought I replied that I wanted to work in Bose( of the speakers fame). Then followed some questions on acoustics and speakers, which I somehow managed to come through unscathed. After this we resumed our discussion on quizzing, in particular, its origin. One of the professors mentioned about its origins in Scotland, and I started talking about pub quizzing, and then about the Guinness Book of World Records. At this point the professor who was doing most of the talking suddenly interrupted me to ask if I drank. I said I didn't, but he and another professor started discussing about Guinness Bitters. Then all of a sudden he turned to me and said,"Son, one day take a glass of chilled Guinness Bitters and sit and listen to your favourite music on Bose Speakers, and you will reach a new plane of existence". With that piece of advice, the interview ended, and I left the room.

Like a lost driver on a highway, we drift through life looking for signboards. Signboards which point to petrol stations. Signboards which point to restrooms and roadside motels. Signboards which point to our destination. Signboards which beckon to us, which call us. Signboards around which we map our journey. Signboards which tell us we are needed, and it's no accident we are here. That we are here with a purpose. That we are more than a physical entity with conscious thought, drifting our way through life. That we are.

I know I have something to say. I'm not very sure how to say it though. Nevertheless, I'll give it a shot.

We wake up and eat and walk and run and study and play and do a countless other mundane everyday things. And we read and we watch and we hear and we think and we learn about the world around us, past and present and future. And we have friends and we talk and we feel and we...live. And from time to time we question. And if lucky, we answer. Or let the signboards answer. Or else, we run after the answers. We scan the horizon for the next signboard. And then we find one, and we are happy again. And we live some more. And it goes on and on and on. Till death. We search for a purpose, then we achieve it, then we search some more. That's what we are. That's how we live.

"He got me invested in some kind of fruit company. And so then I got a call from him saying we don't have to worry about money no more. And I said, "That's good. One less thing." - Forrest Gump

I don't think I was really the best candidate for the scholarship. I think Semi deserved it way more than I did. But I guess that's how it is. You take all the good fortune that comes your way, ever aware of the bad times around the corner. You live, and you work, and you pray.

'Asato ma sat gamaya, Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya, Mrityor mamritam gamaya.'
- Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad

From the non-existent lead me to existence,
From darkness lead me to light,
From death lead me to immortality.

The Critique of Poor Reason

2005-02-08T08:56:00.000-06:00

The very fact that Immanuel Kant, made him agnostic.

I wasted one whole class of Indian philosphy thinking about this statement. As a result, I have very little idea about the Nyaya school of thought, and their views on epistemology. But who cares. It is very rare that one thinks of something so....um....profound! Worthy of being my first short blog post.

The Answer is Blowing in the Haze

2005-02-05T14:19:00.000-06:00

You knew this was coming...didn't you???
This was an article I wrote for the Saarang Newsletter (of which I happened to be one of the editors, one of the excuses for me not writing for so long). It was written at 5 in the morning, after the main quiz, and took some 2 hours to write as most of the time I was asleep. The other half of the time was spent listening to Steely Dan and dumbly staring at the screen wondering what the shit I was doing awake that late at night. I have no idea how this got written.

This post is dedicated to Sparams (who claims he once hit upon my blog....I'm hoping he continues to visit) and Su, who conducted the best quiz I have ever been part of. I can barely wait for the litsoc AV quiz....

Ok, here goes....

-----------------------------------------------------

You havent lived till youve attended a quiz.

And you havent quizzed till you have attended the Saarang Main Quiz.

The second last day of Saarang this year was all about quizzing. For in the morning, while the music blared outside in Bindaas Park, the audience in the CLT were treated to what is quite definitely one of the best quizzes ever in IIT, definitely the best this correspondent has seen. And at night, while most people returned to their rooms to sleep, the OAT witnessed the re-enactment of one of IIT-Ms oldest rituals, a throwback to the days of Mardi Gras, when the world was much more innocent, and hadnt been lost in the swirling streams of the greenback.
Lets stick to the facts first. The AV quiz finals were conducted in the morning in the CLT. Previous quizzes by the quizmasters, as well as a brilliant prelims paper, had built up very high expectations in the minds of all attending. Recipe for a downfall? No chance. For the final was exactly what it promised to be. And more. Much more. From the very first question, to the somewhat curtailed ending, the quiz was a continuous journey from one peak to another. Every question was well researched, well thought out, well presented, and naturally, well received. The one jarring note in the quiz, however, was the curtailed ending, which left one with a bitter taste in ones mouth. A quiz cannot really be bound by rigid time constraints. Ideally, the only things that should stop a quiz should be either a lack of more questions, or a unanimous decision by the participants. One feels very sorry for the coords, who had put a great deal of effort in conducting this event, that some of their questions went unasked. But at the end of the day, such minor details were overshadowed by the sheer sublimity of the quiz, and we would like to extend to the coords our heartiest congratulations and applause.

The AV quiz finals were followed by the India Quiz prelim, which was well attended, and equally well conducted. The questions were very interesting and challenging. On the evidence of the prelim paper, the final promises to be another treat.

The stage was now set for the Lone Wolf Finals. This is one event which has survived the death of Mardi Gras, and its metamorphosis into Saarang, and has remain unchanged. The Lone Wolf Quiz is perhaps the best college level quiz in India, and certainly the most keenly contested. One innovation this year was the introduction of a betting pool for predicting the events winners. This was taken very seriously by the audience, and the contestants now had the added pressure of people telling them that they better win as they had put money on them. The quiz itself was of a very high standard. However what was most heartening was the presence of a sizeable audience, certainly more than last years final. And owing to the betting, most stayed till the end. In true IIT-M tradition, the quiz started one hour late, and went on till sunrise. And for once, none of the participants went of to sleep halfway through the quiz.

Another interesting feature of this years quiz was the innovative audience prizes. The quiz started with all the participants taking a swig from the coords glass, and subsequently, all audience questions were rewarded with the coord handing over his glass to the audience member for a well earned sip. Matters came to a head in a question who's answer was 'alcohol'. One audience member then exhorted the coord to pass the answer to the audience. However, in between all the audience prizes, the coord proceeded to get more and more inebriated, and at the end of the quiz, he was nowhere to be found. Some frantic searching later, he was discovered fast asleep on the OAT floor. The glass, needless to say, was empty.

The Saarang Lone Wolf Quiz is one event which escaped the conversion of Mardi Gras to Saarang without any major repercussion. What happened last night was an exact re-enactment of what happened many years back. It is one of the oldest continuing traditions in quizzing, and going as strong as ever. And while it exists, Saarang will retain its original values and ideals. The idea that is Saarang will never cease to exist.

You havent been to Saarang till youve attended the Lone Wolf Quiz.

And if you havent been to Saarang, you havent lived.

A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man

2005-01-15T01:45:00.000-06:00

1500AD
Albrecht Durer stood in front of his easel, empty canvas in front urging him to transform it into a thing of beauty, and he reflected on his life. And his reflections were pleasurable. For he was 28, and life couldn't have been better. He had had a wonderful childhood, as an apprentice to his father who was a goldsmith. Then at 15 he had set off on his own to learn art. He travelled and saw much of Northern Europe, and earned renown as a highly competent engraver and painter. When he was 20, he fell in love, and married his beloved at the age of 23. His fame as an artist grew, and his business flourished. He even undertook a trip to Northern Italy to learn from the Renaissance masters themselves. He travelled widely and learnt many new techniques, and by the time he returned, he was being hailed as one of Northern Europe's greatest artists. Even he couldn't have painted a prettier picture than that of his life.

And yet today as he stood, brush in hand, one of humanity's oldest desires now manifested and took firm grip of his mind. It had ruined many before. Many had perished in search of it. Some had found it too, often at great costs. But on this day, Albrecht Durer was not going to be defeated. His brush raced across the white sheet, every line inspired. His paints glowed with never seen before lustre. Time stood still as Albrecht Durer painted. Creation. The creation of beauty, where hitherto lay a blank canvas. The creation of something where there existed naught before. In a few days he had achieved what he had set out to do. In front of him lay a portrait, more radiant than any he had done before, than any he would ever do since. More lifelike than life itself. And then in one corner, Durer wrote the following words-

"Thus I, Albrecht Duerer from Nuremburg, painted myself with indelible colours at the age of 28 years."

This article is not a study of Albrecht Durer and his art. I am not qualified in any way to do that. It does not even aim to make a technical analysis of this particular painting. Anybody who is interested in knowing more details about his art or this painting are encouraged to refer to other sources for the relevant information. What this article aims to convey however is my own personal reaction to this painting, my own feelings about it. And in some ways, that is all that is important to me. For I feel art exists only for the sake of the beholder, and it is his impression that matters most. I am not vastly knowledgeable in the intricacies of artistic technique, mainly because I myself have no ability in painting, and so I am not capable of judging the greatness of this painting. Yet this painting, ever since I first saw it, has made an indelible mark upon my psyche. And so I write about it.

Immortality! From the very dawn of humanity, many have strived, often in vain, to achieve it. From the primitive cave man preserving his hand prints on cave walls, to the Pharaos and their great pyramids to safely convey them to their afterlife, from the mysterious alchemists poring over their boiling test tubes in search of the elusive elixir of life, to the hearty adventurers setting of in quest of the Holy Grail to the modern day researchers in cloning and cryogenic preservation, many have searched far and wide. Many have dedicated their entire lives to its quest. In 1500, in a small studio in Nuremberg, Albrecht Durer went in search of it. And found it. And so I write of him today.

The preservation of the body is not really the major necessity of immortality. The existence of a person on Earth is for a large part due to his perceived existence in the eyes of others. A man exists as long as people talk of him. And after he dies, they soon forget about him. However there are some who, by virtue of their achievements on earth, manage to remain in the minds of men long after their bodies have perished. Their creations, be it in the field of art or music or literature or science or, for that matter, in political or religious fields, remain as monuments to their life, and thereby grant them with a sense of immortality. Albrecht Durer was one of them. But there were many others, many perhaps far greater, whose images have remained in far more indelible colours. Yet why do I talk only of Durer? What differentiates him from the rest?

To answer this question, we have to go back in time to 1484, when Durer was still a kid, learning art under the guidance of his father. One of earliest pictures of his which survives today is a self portrait of his, in the corner of which he wrote-

“This I drew, using a mirror; it is my own likeness, in the year 1484, when I was still a child-Albrecht Durer.”

This discovery, that his skill in art could be used to preserve his present state in the form of a painting for posterity, marked the beginning of Durer's fascination with portraits. What followed were three of the greatest portraits the world has ever seen, culminating in his masterpiece at the age of 28. In 1493, at the age of 22, he painted 'Self Portrait with Sea Holly', which was intended as a gift for his beloved. He tries to depict himself at his most beautiful, and in his hand he holds a Sea Holly, which was used as an aphrodisiac. The inscription on the picture reads-

"My affairs will go as ordained on high"

His beloved appears to have been won over for they were soon married. After marriage, Durer embarked upon a trip of North Italy, where he came into direct contact with the Renaissance masters of the time, and learnt about their techniques. This experience he celebrated in his next great portrait, 'Self Portrait with Landscape', in 1498. He appears in the portrait to be well off and contented with life. The landscape in the background is both a celebration of the many places he had been to, as well as a demonstration of his mastery of the Italian Renaissance painting techniques.

The canvas was now set for his crowning achievement. For Durer's paintings had achieved almost everything. They had earned him fame and fortune and love and the opportunity to see the world. And he in turn had captured his success for posterity on his canvas. But now he wanted more. He wanted his canvas to capture more than just his success. He wanted them to capture his very soul, and grant it immortality.

Many years later, in 1890, an Irishman by the name of Oscar Wilde would talk about the transfer of a man's soul into a painting. In his novel, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', the protagonists soul is exchanged with the unchanging portrait. Hence, he appears to be unaffected by all of life's turmoils and upheavals, while his portrait reflects the corruption and moral decay of his soul. At the age of 28, Durer wanted to do just that-transfer a part of him into a portrait, such that it would live forever. Many artists before him had achieved immortality due to the sheer genius of their work. Many would in the future. Many a portrait had been painted or would be painted which would be regarded as of higher artistic value. What however is unique about Durer is that he is one of the only artists I know who deliberately set out to achieve immortality, and succeeded. His portrait was not made with an aim of gaining any monetary profit from it, nor was it a breakthrough in artistic technique. It was painted purely with an aim of using his talents to immortalize himself. And this idea of painting such a self portrait is rare in the world of art. The Renaissance masters rarely painted self portraits, as a result of which, the only portrait that exists of Leonardo's is a pencil sketch, while Michaelangelo appeared as a minor character, usually a damned soul, in a few of his paintings. Rembrandt and Van Gogh painted great portraits, but they aimed more at capturing a moment of their lives, and their feelings at that moment, for posterity. Velasquez, who many regard as the master of the portrait form, has a much grander portrait of his servant than himself. Salvadore Dali inserted his likeness in most of his paintings, but inspite of his great ego, he never painted a truly great self-portrait. Somehow most great artists preferred to use their talents either for monetary gains, or to express an opinion, or preserve a moment, or quite often, for the sake of art itself. Durer, on the contrary, wanted to use his ability to create a likeness of him which would last forever, undimmed in it's brilliance as he grew old, withered, and died. Centuries later, people would be able to look at it, and feel Durer's joy in life, and desire to live forever. And as they did so, his dream would become a reality. He would truly become immortal.

And so was born this painting.

'Self-portrait With Fur Trimmed Coat', as the work is commonly called, is one of the greatest portraits the world has ever seen. It is a perfect amalgam of the Dutch and Italian painting traditions, and is carefully planned and executed on the basis of numerological and geometric considerations (For further details, refer here). Besides the inscription in the corner, and the AD monogram, the other most noticeable feature in the painting is the resemblance of the face to that of Christ. Initially this would seem to be heretical. However, a study of Durer's numerous other paintings reveals a large number of paintings with religious themes, which have been executed with great feeling and knowledge of the subjects. Hence it is unlikely that Durer was motivated by heretical, or egotistic ideas. There are several theories about the reason for the similarities between the faces. One theory claims that Durer had deliberately painted himself in the guise of a 'saviour' as the years prior to the turn of the century had been strife with rumours of a supposed Armageddon, and so he wanted to mark the beginning of the new century with a painting that depicted that God's blessings still lay on humanity. However the other theory is more popular, and more beautiful. It claims that the face of Christ had been created by artists themselves, so it wasn't blasphemous to depict oneself in a similar manner. God was the source of the artists talent. And so Durer decided to paint himself in the image of God in order to express his gratitude towards God for his artistic talents. The painting represents the belief that man is created in the image of God, and that all his talents stem from God himself. Thus it is perhaps one of the most beautiful expressions of thanksgiving to God that the world has ever seen.

So now, having come almost to the end of the article, there remains only one more thing to write about-why I wrote this article in the first place. I first came across this painting around a year ago, and since then I have been captivated by it, and also perhaps motivated by it. So naturally the question arose in my mind that since I have gained so much from the painting, then don't I have a responsibility to repay something back to it? The answer was yes. And so this article was born.

There is in my opinion only one way to honour the portrait of Albrecht Durer, and that is by trying to further the cause for which it was originally painted, to in some measure realize the dream that lies enmeshed in the paints. Albrecht Durer, in 1500, dreamed he would be immortal, that centuries later, he would be remembered and talked about. This article is my humble attempt to further this dream. Your reading of this article is a means of furthering this dream. That was my primary aim. But the influence of the painting still lies upon me. And so somewhere, in the back of my mind, there is a small hope that you have enjoyed reading this, and perhaps many after you will enjoy reading it too, and so I, Siddhartha Banerjee, will too have taken a small step....towards immortality.

That is my dream.

Thank you.

So Be Good For Goodness Sake

2005-01-04T05:59:00.000-06:00

This post was originally intended to be put up on Christmas, but owing to certain difficulties, I was unable to post it from home.

After a long winter hibernation, the raven is ready to take to the skies again.

Come along for the ride.
______________________________________________

It must have been around 5 in the morning, and I cursed myself for having woken up. A cursory glance under the pillow revealed nothing. Over the next hour, sleep started playing fugitive, as I desperately tried to delay the inevitable as long as I could. Maybe he was late, it could happen you know. So many places to go and all that.....

The first unwelcome sunbeam now stealthily crept into the room, and proceeded to burn in their harsh glow a large chunk of my childhood. And as I sat, surrounded by the dying embers of past Christmases, I felt betrayed. A belief which had lasted for fifteen years was now destroyed by the strident cry of my alarm clock. The noise surrounded me, shattering the silence of the night, and I let it flow over me, drowning out all other emotions for a few moments. Then I put it off. And went off to brush and change and.....live. As they say- the show must go on.

And that was the end.

Oh! You better watch out,
You better now cry,
You better now pout,
I'm telling you why:
My childhood around me is coming crumbling down.

I don't really know when I first heard of Santa Claus. But as far back as I can cast back my memory, Christmas has always been associated for me with his yearly visit. The thrill of waking up on Christmas morning and checking under the pillow to find his eagerly awaited gift was one of the highpoints of my year. My old school, on account of being a convent, had a lovely custom of Christmas carol singing in the days leading up to the Christmas break. I used to join in heartily in these renditions, although I was generally miles off key, and although I rarely understood the point of singing of some kid being born in a cowshed. However, as soon as Santa, and his jingling bells and dancing elves and red nosed reindeers would ride into the lyrics of the songs, then the singing would reach new heights. And the festive season would arrive, borne on our voices, and fill our hearts with cheer.

And then would come Christmas. And Santa.

I never knew how he came. Like a draft he would blow in through unseen gaps, yet warmth would remain in his wake. Like a thief he would steal in unheard, yet leave presents behind. Never in time for me to see him, always in time for me to wake up and find he had come. The presents didn't matter, although they more often than not corresponded to what I liked, but more than that it was the entire experience, the thrill...the very spirit of Christmas that seemed to me to be embodied in this ritual. Merry Christmas? Not without Santa!

And now it was over.

Not that it was completely unexpected. Forewarnings of this event had made themselves evident many Christmases ago. Wrapping paper had shown remarkable resemblances to that on gifts given by my parents. Handwritings on the cards had seemed vaguely familiar. The name of a Kolkata bookshop on one of the books had made me wonder about his practice of purchasing gifts locally. Yet the belief was still strong, dispelling all such dark doubts in its bright and warm glow. Matters came to a head one Christmas when I found myself showing Santa's latest present to my mother.

Mom, look what book he gave me this year.

Lovely. It took me a long time to search for it.

Took you a long time?
(Hint of desperation in voice)

The bookshop owner had no idea where he had kept it.

Wait a second, there's some mistake here. This is Santa's gift!
(Desperation replaced by quiet pleading)

O, how clever of him! How did he know you wanted this book?

But the devil was out of the bag. And now, a few years later, his task was complete.

And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite,
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the....my childhood died.

Ok, so cry out and inveigh me. Hurl accusations of hyperboles at me. Say I exaggerate, that I overdramatize. For God's sake, Santa! How can he, white bearded octogenarian with booming laugh and bad dress sense make any difference to my life? How can an old wives tale, a Coke commercialized fantasy have any bearing on anything important?

He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!

Santa Claus, atleast for me, is more than just an imaginary person. For underneath all the bright red garb and buffoonery and sleighs and reindeers and bells and what not, there lies a very very deep underlying concept. Santa is an epitomization of the innocence of childhood, where good and bad are black and white and haven't got lost in the quagmires of philosophical analysis. He is an abstraction, a figurative representation of a child's inherent ability to know what is right, and have conviction in the knowledge. Although often misused as one, but in the purest form, the idea of Santa is far apart from that of the Bogey Man, the eternal tool of terror to subvert the free spirit of children, the 'chup ho jao nahi to Gabbar Singh aa jaye gaa' approach. In fact, Santa, in some sense, finds reflection in the Karmic philosophy, the idea that all of man's actions earn rewards or reprisal, according to their merits.

And while he is present, childhood is present, innocence is present, carefreeness is present. And when he is gone, they follow. And you remain, alone, to deal with all that life hurls at you. To go forth among other men, and live among them, and tolerate them, and be unaffected. An equilibrium, albeit unstable. For their is no safety net, no one to catch you when you fall. There is no good. And even if there was, nothing to compel you to adhere to it, but some measure of mental conditioning, or if you prefer, faith. For life does not work in normal, deterministic ways. Chaos. There is no causality, no inherent rules. Chaos. No Santa to watch over you, to reward you. No rewards. Nothing. Chaos.

I recently saw Robert Zemeckis' Polar Express, mainly because, ever since I saw Forest Gump and the Back to the Future series, I have had great expectations from him. And although the film was overall a disappointment, it did have its moments. Towards the end of the film, when the boy finally manages to have belief in the idea of Christmas, and Santa, it is indicated by the fact that only he, and not others, could hear the noise of the jingling bells. It was then that this post was conceived. For I asked not for whom the bells toll. They toll for me.

Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonder, and looked and looked. It certainly was a marvelous sight. In the farthest corner of the garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were all golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.

Excuse me
Yes?
What about the boy in the cowshed?
What about him?
Why don't you believe in him?
Whatever for?
For the same thing. To be good. To be protected. To be rewarded.
And what reward will he give me?
His life, his love, he's already given it to you.
His life! What for? And you got any proof of that?
For your sins....
Hey wait, you've got hurt in your hand. Boy, that's an ugly wound on your palm.....

Message in a Bottle

2004-12-03T23:11:00.000-06:00

The following post was written on the morning of the 4th of December, 2004, but was not published due to a crash in my computer. Only two people, Shamanth and PB, read the original draft on that morning. However most of it was luckily saved. I can not, at this moment, identify with the mood I was in when I wrote it, but I have not touched it, except for this forward, to explain the delay in it's publication.

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This will be my last post from Tapti 108 this semester. Today, the Raven flies north for the winter.
In the midst of packing all my scattered belongings, I suddenly happened to notice my cell phone inbox. In it were exactly seven messages.
1) check 10.138.12.220 lemme know
2) I want to make a pilgrimage to the source of the holy river Tapti. Lovely intro da. Can I come with you?
3) That settles it. You are writing me an article on the bauls, a comprehensive one. I am glad to find a kindred soul.
4) Gult, do well in end sems. Best of luck da
5) Dark clouds, golden twilight and real pretty rainbow outside, ever drifting down the stream, life what is it but a dream-dodgson. just thought i would let you know, see ya
6)Not u too da. What did I do to u guys? Why cant u freaking stay out of my other world. I still have three years to live here with you. Please stay out of my life. I actually don't care now if u are offended.
7)Bye da. We r leaving now. Parents ask you to take care.

I really should delete all messages as soon as I get them. As Caulfield indicates, the very act of going back over the past is fraught with great emotions. Yet there are emotions which can not be suppressed, should not be forgotten. They are what makes us human, gives meaning to our lives.

My existence is defined by these messages. They are what links the island that I am with the great sea of humanity around me. They are my message in a bottle.
My sincerest apologies to anyone who is offended by this. That is not the aim. Never has been. This is about me, my life, my messages. The messages are a snapshot of the present moment, as well as a chronicle of my entire semester. And I want to write of them. Cell-fish you may call it....and I'll reply...good pun!

The first message is a tribute to one of the greatest developments in IIT this sem-the introduction of a LAN connecting all hostels, as well as the provision of internet connections to every room. That, coupled with my recent acquisition of a computer has changed greatly the pattern of my life in IIT. The convenience of submitting assignments from ones room instead of trudging all the way to the DCF, the pleasure of discovering all sorts of interesting music/movies/videos/software on the LAN led to my having built up a large collection of music, all of which was unfortunately lost when my hard disk crashed, but most of which has been recovered thanks to the owner of the computer whose proxy was given in the message, someone who I am proud to call a good friend of mine, someone who has the most amazing taste in music, someone who refuses to comment on this goddam blog, inspite of my repeated requests. My most heartfelt gratitude goes out to him, and also to the Diro and Dean and all else who made this possible.

The second refers to another major change in my life in IIT this sem- my shifting hostels to Tapti. After one year of freshers hostel, Tapti was indeed a welcome change. It is, IMHO, by a long way the best goddam hostel in IIT-M! The facilities, the mess food, the Tapti lights, the seniors, the freshies( one of whom wrote this message...), the hostel staff, the cats, the hostel spirit, the deer outside the window....I could go on forever extolling the virtues of Tapti, but for now, this should suffice.

The third refers to the Raven's Desk, something which I wanted to start for a long time, but finally managed to this sem, and something which has given me a lot of pleasure, and hopefully, has given you some too.

The rest of the four messages are what this article is about though.

Behind me, my clothes and books clamour for attention. The watch by my side ticks away. Time is not only not waiting, but it seems to be making a concerted effort to escape. The moment though still lies on me...I must finish this before I leave.
So I keep it short.

Saki once started a short story with a quotation, "A man is known by the company he keeps". Many, including me, believe that this maxim can be shortened to give it a wider scope-"A man is the company he keeps". Paulo Coelho, in the Alchemist, talks about the existence of the Universal Soul. In Hindu philosophy, the concept of the self as an illusion is a basic tenet. In Teddy, Salinger talks about the apple of logic, which we must spit in order to see the world in its true form. It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, for me to express my beliefs, for I am not possessed with the profound vision of Coelho, the deep spiritual knowledge of the ancient Hindu philosophers, or the beauty of Salinger's words. Yet I do have a firm belief in what I say, and I hope that it will lend some credence to my arguments, or perhaps, some meaning.

I am what my friends are, and what they make of me. For I do not feel I exist anywhere but in their minds. Sometimes I sit down and wonder who the hell I am, how I can be sure that I am really me. Sure the name on the book reads S.Banerjee, the name on the examination answer sheet reads Siddhartha, the name on my hostel jersey reads BOFi, the name on my sisters Rakhi card reads Bumpy Dada (don't even think of asking me what the hell that means!). But how do I know they refer to me? Maybe I actually live in the next room, and entered this one by mistake. When I look into a mirror, a stranger looks back at me, someone I see once a day when I comb my hair, on many days, never at all. So then...who the hell am I? I have read of astral projections, and often wish I could leave my body for a few moments and look down upon it, and know it's me. But I can't. I can not, by myself, verify my existence. And so, for myself, I do not exist.

But I do exist. How you ask? Well, when you ask the question, refer to me by name, and I'll exist. I exist in the minds of my friends, of people I've met. I exist when they call me, compliment me, chastize me....when they talk to me. Perhaps I even exist when they think of me. That is who I am-who you think I am. I exist in the seven messages on my cellphone. That is who I am.

Seven! In the Bible, God created the world in seven days. The Muslims believe in the existence of seven heavens. Antipater of Sidon talks of the seven wonders, Erasmus Desidarius of the seven cardinal sins, Ptolemy of the seven spheres, Ian Fleming of the Licence to Kill, Dr. Srinivasan of the seven segment display. And now I talk of my seven messages.

Suppose it were to all end here....now....today. No, no, don't complain, just hypothesize. That, for some reason, my plane crashes and all that is found of me is my cell phone. Then you would believe that my entire definition, at that moment, would be those seven messages. Now we can generalize this. These seven messages are who I am at this time. They are what makes me unique. Not my fingerprints. Not the twin strands of DNA which define my physical existence. No, I am more than just a mass of cells with some order and symmetry and rhythm. I am me. But me is not defined by my idea of me. Me is defined in those seven messages. Me is defined in my friends, some of whom may be thinking well of me now, some thinking ill, some not thinking of me now. Me is defined by their relationship with me, for that is my place in the universal soul, in God himself. Me is defined by attachment....the attachment I have to them...and hopefully they to me.

I can not thank everybody for all the happiness they have given me. That would take too long.

I can not apologize to everybody for all the pain I have given them. That would take too long.

So I write this. And so I pray to God...for thanksgiving...for forgiveness...for help.

This was supposed to be about the seven messages on my cell. In reality it, like all of my life, is about the people who are part of it.

At seven tonight I will be flying somewhere over the Bay of Bengal.

This, then, is my message in a bottle, which I now throw into the sea of my life. Go forth and help me connect to all around me.

A Day in the Life

2004-11-14T01:33:00.000-06:00

Some time back a friend of mine asked me how come I do not write about day to day events in my blog, instead of my usual long anecdotal or uni-topical posts. At that time, as is usual in any conversation with me, I managed to escape with an ambiguous answer delivered with sufficient rhetoric backup to make it appear to carry weight. Now that I am about to go against my usual practice and write about a single day in my life, I am compelled to first try and answer his question to some degree of completeness.

A single day in reality is quite an arbitrary time unit. It is true that it appears quite natural, and is backed up by the sun and it's periodic appearances in our life, but as any amateur dabbler in relativity will tell you, time is really not a very absolute quantity, determined as it is by inertial reference frames, and irritating little scalars and vectors and four vectors and complex equations and light bouncing off surfaces and all the other paraphernalia with which physicists conduct their beloved thought experiments, and sometimes real experiments too with clocks flying around the Earth slowing down and what not. The point of all that pseudo-scientific nonsense( 'cause I really ain't too hot in relativity!) is that it is not really a viable option to try and regulate human life by such an artificial thing such as a day. Hence I try to portray a heartbeat, a moment, an instance, a frame of mind, an incident, for these are more natural to the human mind. A day can encompass many a mood, many an emotion, many an anecdote, many a thought about human existence, many a worthy blog post. But now that the challenge has been thrown down, respond I must. And respond I will.

This was a day in my life, as I lived it, as I remember it.

Ok, it would be quite wrong to call it a normal day, for Diwali never really is very normal, especially not for Bengalis, who have the pleasure of enjoying both Diwali and Kali Puja. For me, Kali Puja has, for the last five years, been associated with fasting all day. This should not be taken as an indication that I am masochistic( which I'm guessing most of us are to some extent) or deeply religious( which I am to some extent, but fasting doesn't have much to do with that). I have always loved Kali Puja, for it is quite different from all the other Pujas that we celebrate. The late timings, the incessant noise of firecrackers in the background, the image of the Goddess, with her dark colour and violent metaphors coupled with a sense of peace, the eternal contradictions between beauty and ugliness, reverence and terror, good and evil, have infused this festival, atleast for me, with a sense of romance and mystery. As a child, I remember watching my mother and grandmother fast all day, in order to be able to offer 'Pushpanjali' at night. I was then not allowed to fast, but as soon as I was allowed to, I immediately started a practice which has become one of the constant highpoints of my year, ever present, unmindful of all the other changes in my life. In recent times, the romance of the act has somewhat died, so now I continue the practice in order to try and relive the wonderful times I had, a sort of nostalgic portkey, taking me back to my childhood days.

And so, as Diwali dawned this year, I once again found myself riding upon this wave of nostalgia.

Ok, here goes. As is the norm on any holiday, I woke up late. But since this was one heck of a special holiday, I woke up especially late. Many a visitor came to my room, many a message was received by my cell phone, but to all I turned a sleepy ear. 11.30 came by, found me in bed, and departed with a disapproving shake of the seconds hand. But then, owing to a dichotomy between my alarm clock and cell phone clock, 11.30 came by again, and this time, to my utter surprise, found me awake. It was only when 11.30 had come along again( trichotomy ...wristwatch getting into the act) did I suddenly realize that I had gone to sleep at 12 the previous night, and had thus missed out, by half an hour, on another memorable half-a-day sleep, an event which has occurred only a handful of times in my recent past. But time could not be made to go back, and sleep had disappeared completely, and so I wearily switched on the computer, trying desperately to not insult my wing-mate who had by now come along to ask me if I was coming for lunch....

After a few summary checks of my blog( Boy! It sure has been a long time since I updated last), I decided to watch a Mrinal Sen movie that I had been trying to watch for half a month now, but had not been able to get past the first scene, as everytime I start it, some other work comes up, and the movie screening is deferred to a later date. On this day too the curse showed no signs of abating, and as soon as the credits had disappeared, there was heard the distinct sound of knocking upon my door.

Outside stood a red guy.

To be precise, The Red Guy.

Now such an occurrence is usually a signal for joyous celebrations, with flowing drinks and heaps of food. But in my present state( he he he, boy am I milking the fasting....), all I could do was let out tribal war cries, and welcome him in with low bows and red carpets. For the next two hours I listened with rapt attention as the Red Guy spoke about many a topic, ranging from Open Quiz organizational work to TPV printing hangups to Shamanth and his chronicles to dramatics to Godavari hostel to Joe Sat to Dire Straits to Thoreau to Freud to God to life to and fro to the moon and back......( somebody ssssstop meeeee!!!!)

Einstein( boy does he come up often in this post....!) had once tried to disprove the special theory of relativity by coming up with a paradox which went something like this-If you sit on a burning stove for one minute, it feels like an hour whereas if you sit with a Red Guy for one hour, it feels like a minute. And so, thanks to Einsteinian time scales, the minutes of my afternoon flew by, and soon I found that it was tea time. Deprived of both company( how long could he stay?) and coffee, I decided to give cinema another go. This time I was interrupted by a phone call from Amrut, in which he proceeded to loudly chomp his evening snack while simultaneously talking to me, a fact which soon cut the conversation short. For the next two hours I sat around reading books, listening to Ravi Shankar and his sitar, doing some Open Quiz research, removing cobwebs from my text books.......Outside, Taptians decided to hold something called a slow cycling contest, which turned out to be great fun to watch as one guy cycled at normal speed and completed the lap, while all others tried going slow, fell down and got disqualified!

Soon, Taptians got tired of slow cycling and turned their attention to fireworks. By now, I was feeling a bit odd, so I went off to have a bath. By the time I was done, it was 8, and having nothing better to do in life, I decided to set off for the Puja. I had hoped to get a lift to the gate, but soon all my hopes of doing so were shattered by the complete lack of people on the road, and I found myself facing a 3 km walk. By now I was feeling decidedly odd. Tagore suddenly started reciting in my ear-
"Jodi tor dak shune keu na aashe, tobe ekla cholo re"
If none heed your cry, then plough on alone, said Tagore. And with his words, my mind travelled back to those Diwalis I had spent in Kolkata, when we would all assemble in the pandal outside our house in the evening and listen to the bauls singing their songs. Songs of laughter, of gaiety, of dance and mirth, of spring and nature and the birds and trees and rivers of Bengal, of the omnipotent God who had created it all, not Ram, not Allah, for each held equal right over the lands of Bengal. No, the bauls sang of an abstract concept, a formless God. They were songs of love, and Tagore too had been inspired by them, and subsequently inspired them. As I walked along the forests of IIT-M, my mind watched a saffron clad baul, with his ektara, strumming away, dancing away, in a trancelike state, his voice rising over the gathered crowd, straight up to the God he sang for...

At the gate, my reverie was broken by the necessity of getting an auto. After much bargaining, and after absorbing the choicest Tam insults, I finally managed to convince one guy to take me along for the exorbitant sum of 35 bucks, something which I put down to as a Diwali bonus. As we travelled, I remembered how once we had gone mad trying to hire a cab in Delhi on Diwali night, and being informed by all taxi operators that there all their drivers were in an inebriated state. Thankfully, one old Ambassador was finally found, and we managed to reach the puja...

I too now found myself in a puja mandap. Outside a large group of people were sitting around and bursting crackers. The smoke and noise swirled around me, isolating me from all around. It penetrated into me consciousness. Smoke. Light. Noise. As I slowly lost my grip on the present, there arose from the haze visions of my past. As I bowed down before the idol, not one idol did I see, but a collage of the many Kali idols I had seen over the years, from the permanent idols at Dakshineshwar and Kalighat, to the Nabokali, the representations of the nine forms assumed by the Goddess, bringer of life, preserver of life, destroyer of life, all powerful, all pervading, as Shiva lay beneath her feet, on one hand-blessings, on the other-death. I remembered how once as a child I had given my entire saved up pocket money, a grand sum of Rs 50, to our local puja organizer, and how he had promised to use it for buying the saree offered to the Goddess, and how during the puja he had pointed out the saree to me, and a nameless thrill had run through my body, stemming from an innocent childlike belief that the Goddess would actually accept the offering. I had concentrated on the Goddess's eyelids all evening, for a sign that she was present, waiting to accept my gift, and how they had blinked...

A group of devotional singers now started singing some of Ramprasad's Shyamasangeet. These remarkable devotional songs had been an integral part of my childhood Kali Pujas. In the evenings, my father would bring out an old cassette of these songs, and we would listen to them, and then put it back, only to take them out next year, the flow of time, periodicity, devotion-all rolled into one 60 minute tape. They were remarkable songs, and I was always amazed by the familiarity which Ramprasad displayed while talking to Ma Kali. I always wished I could also meet her and be familiar with her...although I do not think I then had much to talk to her about. Perhaps I would admire her resemblance with her idols.....

I sat down at the back of the hall, and having nothing better to do, I started to observe the other people in the hall. There wasn't a big crowd, owing to the late timings. In front of me sat this seemingly autistic girl in a wheelchair, with her mother in the neighbouring seat. She appeared totally oblivious to all around, and was nodding her head to and fro repeatedly. A little way ahead of them, on the ground, sat this large group of people. The one among them who caught my attention first was this girl, who appeared to be a few years elder to me, sitting at the edge of the group. She appeared to have been sitting for a long time, and was obviously uncomfortable with sitting cross-legged for so long, as she kept shifting from one foot to the other, and soon gave up sitting cross legged all together. However, what drew my attention to her immediately was the fact that she was by a long way the most beautiful looking person in the room, nay, one of the most beautiful people I have ever seen. She was wearing a simple, white salwar kameez, and her hair was tied in a ponytail, the overall effect of which just took my breath away. At this point, Jibanananda Das suddenly started whispering Banalata Sen in my ear-
"Chul tar kabekar andhakar bidishar nisha,
Mukh tar Shrabastir karakarjo....."

It is very difficult for me to write this in a manner so as to properly express what I felt at the time. In any case, I am pretty sure that by now a large number of junta would have thought up smart ass comments to make about this. Thing is, what I wrote in the above paragraph would be a more or less accurate( although not well framed) description of my thoughts at that moment, but they may not necessarily be accurate in an absolute frame. I was by then feeling quite odd, and my brain was functioning at a heightened level. What was interesting, a fact that I noticed a few minutes later, was that I had recollected a Jibanananda Das poem at that moment, rather than a Salinger quotation or a Rosetti painting or some other expression of beauty that I would be more familiar with. I was reminded of Dr. Ramachandran and his lectures on synesthesia, for here I was recalling a poem which I hadn't heard for a long time,mainly because my brain had somehow made the connection to this poem due to the fact that she was a bengali, whereas, in any other case, I may have recollected something else.

Anyway, having nothing better to do, I watched her for sometime, wondering why she was performing this fast. Did she too want to recall her past Kali pujas, and memories of what she had left behind? I doubted it, considering her entire family was there, and appeared to be localites. Perhaps a sense of adventure then, or a challenge. Or maybe a thanksgiving, or a happiness, or even a sadness. Wordsworth now put in an appearance-
"Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow,
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago;
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of today?
Some natural sorrow, loss or pain,
That has been, and may be again."
Then all of a sudden I noticed something which diverted my attention from her.

To her left, a few feet away, sat this young boy, perhaps 5 to 6 years of age, looking very dapper in a shirt and trousers, and some manner of a jacket. He appeared to be either a cousin, or a family friend of the girl's, and was entertaining himself with what I believe is termed a 'cap gun', alternately shooting himself and a member of his family, and every time getting perturbed by the lack of sound, owing to the fact that the 'cap' had been removed as he was at the puja. He in particular seemed to enjoy playing with the girl, a fact not unusual considering she was the only one who, bored of the proceedings, was paying him any attention, making the necessary dying actions when required, and at other times trying very hard to make him come over and sit with her. Suddenly, in the midst of his game, the young fellow noticed the autistic girl, who was now making quite violent movements of her head, and was being pacified by her mother. As I watched on in wonder, his eyes widened as he for the first time noticed this girl. His gun, poised at his head in order to shoot him, was frozen in place. In fact his entire body had gone completely rigid. Only his eyes moved, taking in the entire site of the girl, and her rythmic nodding movements, and her mother trying to calm her. Then all of a sudden he turned his head to look at his playmate, who was at that moment talking to her mother. He looked at her for perhaps five seconds and then turned back to look at the other girl, and I could see the question bursting out from his wide open eyes, glowing with the innocence of childhood, as he beheld this great dichotomy, this great contradiction of life

I think at this point I started praying. For I could have gone and taken him on my lap, and somehow, in a simple manner, explained to him the basics of genetics, and DNA, and Mendel's theories, and of protein sequences, and the way they defined an individuals unique properties...and of mutations. I could have explained to him the basics of probability theory, and of random processes, and showed to him, in some manner, the fact that there was a probability of one in a million or one in a billion or whatever it was that a person could develop autistic tendencies. Perhaps I could apply the same laws and show him how his cousin, or whatever relation she was of his, was also a unique specimen( if I may use the word) of humanity, like a rare gem in a stone quarry, a great work of art amongst millions of mediocre efforts. All this I could show him, and answer his questions on them to some degree of satisfaction. But what of the questions I had no answer to? What if he asked me why the autistic girl, and no other person in the hall, was autistic. I could again babble about family trees and genetic inheritance, but what if he asked me what her cousin would experience, what her family would experience, having her in their midst? What if he asked me why all our brains were programmed to respond to the same stimuli in the same way, that all our conceptions of beauty were more or less alike, that for all of us 'a thing of beauty was a joy forever'? To all these I had no answers. So all I could do was pray. Pray that he not concern himself much with these questions. Pray that he not tax his brain too much to resolve this paradox. Pray that he not notice the third woman in this triangle, who was staring at him from behind, with her tongue sticking out, perhaps in mockery, or in disdain, at this site....

Someone now started singing one of Sandhya Mukherjee's devotional songs-
"Esho Maa Lakhi, bosho ghore"
(Come O Goddess Lakshmi, and rest in this abode of mine)
My mind went back to all the Lakshmi pujas I had seen at home, when my mother and grandmother used to work together and prepare the bhog, the sacred food offered to the Goddess, and how the purohit used to turn up at the allotted time and perform the puja. And I remembered one year when, for some reason unfathomable to me then, and perhaps still unfathomable, my grandmother and mother had quarreled, and my grandmother had refused to help in the preparations. And how I had in the evening, a little while before the puja started, suddenly remembered this song, hunted all over the place till I found it, and played it. As it played, its melody and words pervaded the unnatural silence that had settled over the house. And the word had penetrated into my grandmother's and mother's minds, and they forgot all about their arguments and again worked together on the preparations, and the puja had been conducted wonderfully. But the damage had been done. For I remembered a moment in the afternoon, when I had entered the puja room to carry out some errand, and looked at the idol, and she had looked back at me passively, and all of a sudden I was filled with this indescribable feeling. Not hate, not disgust, not distrust-no, none of these, for I was too much in awe of her to feel any negative emotion towards her. No, it was more like what Christ felt, when he cried out-
"Eloi, eloi, sabachtani?"
My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
Like the kid pondering the paradox of the two girls, I too had that day asked a question on life, and I had asked it to God himself, and no answer had been forthcoming. And I had shelved this question, with many others like them about life, one by one, till one day they would fill to overflowing....

By now the autistic girl had left, and so had the boy. The aarati had started, and I too moved forward to get a better glimpse of it. Again I looked into the idols eyes, like many times before, for some movement. None was forthcoming today. Then it was time for the pushpanjali. I noticed the other girl too was giving it, and seemed quite excited about it, impatiently waiting to be given the flowers. Then, in a few minutes it was all over, and we all headed off to collect the bhog. The heavenly taste of khichri and payesh, at 1 in the night, after fasting for over 24 hours is indescribable, certainly for me, in all probabilities for most other people...

As I walked away from the puja, my mind went back to my childhood again, those idyllic days in Kolkata, then the shift to Delhi, and the pujas I had enjoyed there, with my entire family, my parents, grandmother, uncle, aunt, sister, away from my homeland, yet at home. And all the time those shelves were filling up waiting to burst. And I remembered the day of my counselling, when a voice had told me to get out. To get out from the context, the life I had led till now, and go elsewhere for answers. And I had. And those shelves had kept filling. And the voice had acquired a name for itself...

And I felt alone. As I went towards my friends house, I felt alone and cut off like I never had before. Cut off from my past, my heritage, my culture, my birthplace. Jibanananda now started off again-
"Abar ashibo fire dhanshiritir teere - ei Banglai"
(I shall return once more...)

I will return one day, when I have settled all my shelves, answered all my voices. I will return, like Jibanananda before me, to the banks of the many rivers which wash my land. I will return to that city that saw me enter this world, and was like a mother to me for a large part of my life, which still calls out to me, across the mists of time, across the wide expanses that separate her from me, asking me to return. I will return again to the setting of my childhood, and claim what is left of it. I will return-to Bengal.

On the 11th of November, 2004, this was how I lived my life.

Owing to the wonderful thing called memory, I can live that day long after it has passed.

Owing to this wonderful thing called The Raven's Desk, I can live that day...forever.

Coming Back to Life

2004-11-12T12:21:00.000-06:00

Rembrandt-The Return of the Prodigal Son

Ok...believe it or not...the BOFi's back( is on fire??)

I look at the date on the last blog entry, and shudder to find that it has been such a long time since I have updated. Its not that I do not have any thing to write about-in fact, I have been mulling over atleast half a dozen topics, and even have 3 unfinished drafts waiting to be completed and posted, but somehow I have over the last few days hit into a writers blog( ok ok...so I've used it before...so what?). The past few weeks have generally been quite hectic, with lab exams and assignment submissions and dramatics and God knows what else. But now, I'm back, and hopefully( fingers crossed), with a vengeance.

The inspiration for this post was the fact that it is the first post I'm writing after downloading Mozilla Firefox 1.0. I hadn't noticed that it had been released, but as soon as I did, I immediately downloaded it, installed it, opened it for the first time, did a celebratory dance around the room, toasted it with a glass of Tapti's finest( yeah...water...whaddya think I would drink?)...and sat down to write this post.

This is for all of you who haven't yet downloaded Firefox 1.0-WHAT THE HELL ARE YA WAITIN FOR??? Now I am not a compsci stud, and will be the first person to admit that my fundaes on computers and internet are just a shade better than my fundaes on guitaring( I can now play my first Mozart piece-"Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", with a probability of one in ten repetitions of getting it correct). So do not for a moment interpret this post as some sort of tech pseud, or an attempt to portray myself as the computer stud that I aint. For hardcore tech fundaes, I request you to contact my good friends Venkat, or TS, or anybody else in the whole wide goddam world for that matter( save Shamanth:P). Thing is, after years of using IE, I just find Firefox a helluva lot faster/easier to use/convenienter/less prone to crashing/less irritating/better than any other browser that I have used. Now I will be the first to admit that I haven't really used Opera all that much, so I would have to reserve judgement on that, but for anyone using IE, or Netscape( which anyway is the basis of Firefox), or older versions of Mozilla browsers, switch now. The installation file is only 4.7 MB, and believe me, every moment spent downloading it will be worthwhile.

In other news, Arafat has died, the Shankaracharya has been arrested, Tapti mess food has hit a new low with no special grub for Diwali, there are some crazy junta playing volleyball outside my room at this odd hour, Belafonte is singing to me about some little girl he left behind in Kingston Town, and I have finally given way to incessant pressure from my loyal fan following( Shamanth-thank God you exist) and made The Raven's Desk a public blog( as Chekhov said in one of his short stories, and I quote as best as my memory permits me so may all errors be forgiven, "Mock me, ridicule me, inveigh me all, but please-one at a time.").

Me, myself and BOFi

2004-10-17T03:09:00.000-05:00

What good is a man in the real world if he doesn't have a few multiple personalities, to live his life for him when he don't feel like livin' it any more?

"When I was younger,
So much younger than today,
I never needed anybody's help in anyway.
But now those days are gone,
And I'm not so self assured,
Now I find I've changed my mind,
And opened up the doors."
Help-The Beatles

I find myself with many a thing to explain, many a person to apologize to, many a confession to make. I have thought a lot about it, about what I have done to myself, what myself has done to me. Thing is, I generally find it quite difficult to think of things in an abstract manner in my mind. Thoughts generally do not have a habit of existing independently, in a limbo, for the sake of themselves. They are an ally to speech, to writing, to any creative act that we perform, not an independent function of the brain, atleast not in my case. So we try to work around it, through visualization, through mental abstractions, through conversations with oneself. Then, at some point of time, you end up losing the thread, and give up the line of thought. Or you turn to writing it down.

So I write it down.

Thing is, it feels quite awkward to write only about myself, 'cause I do not think that it will make for very enjoyable reading. So, this post will mainly be about the system of nicknaming which is an integral and highly enjoyable part of life in IIT-M, something which makes this institute unique. And coincidentally, it has a deeper connection with my plight. So I would like to request all casual readers to just skip over the italicized portions, they are more for me, and for some people who I owe explanations to. More importantly, even if you do read it all, PLEASE DON'T comment on the italicized parts, else I'll be forced to insult you....

Ragging is prohibited by law-yeah right! It isn't so here for sure. However the brilliant thing about IIT-M is the fact that the ragging here is actually extremely enjoyable, an experience that most people end up cherishing. Seriously! There are of course the stray cases of ragging getting serious, and of certain obscene ragging practices, but overall it is a brilliant experience. Most people here are pretty unique specimens of humanity, with more quirks than people in most other places, and it is this which makes 'interacting' with them such a brilliant experience.

Now one of the main components of IIT-M ragging is the ceremony of 'nicking' of freshies. Now before you get any ideas of seniors making sharp cuts in freshies with a blade or something, I will quickly assure you that it is nothing of the sort; it is in fact a ceremony in which the freshie is bestowed with a nickname, one which will define his identity in IIT-M, and quite often, after IIT-M too.

Define one's identity-how come nobody told me that. I always thought that it was another bit of meaningless bullshit, one of those things seniors generally do to derive some sort of sadistic pleasure. I always thought that you could take your nickname and still be who you were, and that people would know you for who you were and not by the goddam personality you had been arbitrarily allocated to. IIT-M takes in one bunch of people, remoulds them, and sends them out changed, complete with new name. A complete overhaul, a modern day Miniluv. You aren't who you were after you are here, you have become who you they have made you. Change for the better you say? I don't know....I don't know....

Now, as most seniors will tell you, nicking is not a completely arbitrary process. It depends to a large extent on the freshie himself, on how he interacts with you. True there are a disproportionate number of 'dufu's' around, who have been nicked completely arbitrarily, by seniors who didn't have time or enthu or any goddam creativity to nick them better, but by and large, most freshies on aposteriori reflection realize that they have earned their nicks, and in most cases are decently pleased with them. Thus, some sort of balance, some sort of equilibrium is maintained due to which a large number of people in every batch end up with nicknames they can proudly call their own (but most often can't reveal them outside IIT for fear of ridicule....). Some of course go further, and completely integrate their nicknames into their lives.

I never did want to grow up. Ever since I read Peter Pan, and Winnie-the-Pooh, and Alice in Wonderland, and stuff like that, I had decided to never leave my own enchanted forest. Time, fate, JEE ranks, and a goddam sense of wanderlust landed me up in another forest in Chennai. Not that any other forest would have made a difference, in fact, IIT-M delayed the process for some time, by virtue of the fact that it still retains a sense of childlike wonder compared to the cynicism of other IITs. Here, in this enchanted forest, I could still walk with the deer, and sing with the birds, and hide from the grown-ups. Yet it drew me out from my own enchanted forest, and as I drew out, I felt myself filling up into someone else, not Siddhartha, but someone else who had become one with me...I became the BOFi.

"wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on top of the Forest, a little boy and his bear will always be playing."
The House at Pooh Corner-A.A.Milne

I wish it were that easy.....

The most interesting thing about nicknames is that they have a funda behind them. Now most of the time, these fundaes are pretty pointless and dumb, but every once in a while one meets people who have very entertaining fundaes. These fundaes are generally based upon their experiences during interaction, on what they said, on what they did. However, quite often people get nicknames long after the interaction period, based on certain quirks of theirs, or on certain interesting experiences that they had in IIT. I'll start my hall of fame of interesting nicknames with one such example-that of my good friend Wimpy. Now when Wimpy first turned up in IIT, the story goes that he used to go around trying to impress everyone with his amazing intellect. Seniors were greeted with a very cordial outstretched hand and a greeting which went thus-"Hello. I am JEE rank 12 and my name is Karthik. I am sure you're glad to meet me......". Soon our man Wimpy became the terror of his wing. The whole hostel used to turn up to watch Wimpy vs 8th wing battles. If someone put on loud music, Wimpy used to immediately inform him that it was hampering his crucial mental processes. If someone took too long in the bog, then our man would lecture him on the need for cooperative bog-time allocation strategies or whatever. Soon he decided to give himself a nickname, for who was more suited for the task than him? One fine day, 8th wing junta were asked to address him as 'C' because he felt he was qualified enough to issue pointers in C to all around him. At this point seniors decided to take matters into their own hands, and so Wimpy was born-the only nickname in the history of the world (as our man will proudly tell you) that is the alternate pronunciation of an abbreviation of an abbreviation! For Wimpy stands for 'WingP' which is short for 'Wing PITA' which is short for....you get the point! (whew, now I need some water after all that!)

By the way, in case you get wrong impressions, I would like to make it very clear at this point that Wimpy is a very dear friend of mine, and that he has changed remarkably from his early days. He's one of the few people who I know is capable of laughing at himself, a quality for which I respect him greatly. He has a lovely blog of his own, and is one of the pillars of No Questions Asked. He recently has been awarded the Aditya Birla Scholarship, something which he 'richly' deserves, and has managed to bring in his personal life some sort of order;). I sincerely hope his life keeps changing for the better, and that he doesn't mind my writing about him too much.....

Life change for the better? Is it really that nice to be an adult, losing all that you cherished for all these years, the sense of wonder in all around you, the innocence, the carefreeness, the belief that parents were perfect, and friends were always by your side, and that attachments were unconditional? To be filled with the terror of the unknown, uncertain future, to have to choose your paths, when till now you were guided by others. To have to look for hidden meanings in every action of others, be responsible for the outcomes of your own actions. Some take in all these changes with a sense of derring-do, as just another adventure (although I believe the sense of adventure is a part of childhood, and so we have a contradiction...), others don't think about it, and others still don't even realize it is happening to them. I, on the other hand, ran away from it as far as I could, and ended up meeting myself. And so the BOFi was born, as a projection of all adult features in me. Initially it was imperceptible, an occasional deviation in my habits, my mode of interacting with people around, but after sometime I realized I could alternate between the two. So at times, depending on the situation I could be Siddhartha, and at other times I was BOFi. In the beginning it was all quite novel, to be able to react to situations in different ways and all, but after some time, and I still don't know how, it all went wrong...

Resuming from Wimpy, we next come upon the great Narmad nicking scheme. Now Narmada is one hostel with which I have had very close ties over the first year (and a large number of my friends happen to be there still), and so I have had lots of exposure to Narmad nicks. Besides Wimpy (and for that matter, Hospy), Narmad has a host of other interesting nicknames. My good friend Helmet is said to have got his name due to his comparing a certain anatomical part to a helmet. Shamanth is one of those people who hasn't got a standard nickname, but the most commonly used one would be Bigchu, which was allocated under the Narmad nicking scheme-to address people as prefixes to a certain hindi profanity. So Shamanth was 'big', Ramji was 'our' (which subsequently became OC), and others became 'this', 'that', 'other', 'yet another'(who became YAC), etc.

Talking of Shamanth, I am forced to admit that he gives people THE WORST POSSIBLE nicknames ever. I do not know anybody, except my good neighbour Mahanama (named for the great accuracy and size of his nama, studies have shown that it deviates from a parabola by a maximum of 1%), who has ever retained a Shamanth nickname. Yet our man goes around proudly calling people by his nicknames, and then turning to us and laughing, as if he had just made a big joke or something. Thing is, we too end up laughing at these moments, and the poor guy never realizes we are laughing at him, and not his nicknames! And so he proudly struts around calling people CD and Peter and Bigf and Mr.Beef and Paedo and God knows what else, while all around him nod their heads in sympathy, and wonder how many volts it'll take.....

It wasn't obvious at first, but slowly I realized that there were often times when I ended up saying things I would have never said. I developed a habit of saying things for pseud like many people around, although I always hated doing this. Often I said things which ended up paining people, but I never said it to derive any sadistic pleasure or anything, it just happened. I developed a sense of cynicism, a dislike for things, which I never had before. And from second sem onwards, when the novelty of hostel life had worn off, I was slowly filled with a general sense of depression at life, one which I have managed to fight off effectively enough, but one which keeps coming back at odd times to haunt me. And I have receded further with every moment into BOFi. Most people I know here haven't actually met me, or known what I am like. They have seen a facade-no, I lie. They have seen BOFi, for he is not a facade, he is real. As real as I am, more perhaps at times....

Now I do not think a post on nicknames would be complete without a mention of the nicknames that (ahem) I have given. I have had the privilege of giving a grand total of three nicknames, not because of a lack of ragging sessions, but because I do not like giving nicks arbitrarily like many of my friends do, but like to put some thought into them. I like them to be such that the recipient is proud of it, is able to use it outside IIT. One of the nicknames I gave was to a batchmate of mine-Kumar Appaiah, who is one of the nicest people I know, and is an absolute God of Linux and other computer related topics. Besides, he also has a decent knowledge of Bengali, and a great love for Kolkata, a city in which he spent a large part of his childhood. Due to the respect I have for him, I christened him KMap, an abbreviation of his name, which I am sure will ring a bell with anyone exposed to digital logic. Luckily this name seems to have caught on, because he deserves it.

The other two nicknames I gave were to Narmad freshies. One of them informed me that he was not occupying his room, but had left his mattress there, upon which I asked him to make suitably changes to his mattress so as to properly stake out his territory, taking inspiration from the habits of wild animals. Thus AMP was born-short for 'A mattress pisser'. The other freshie happened to act out a scene for us in which he was going to suggest to his girlfriend that they get physical. However his way of doing things happened to be to suddenly make the suggestion as the two of them were cycling to school, without any preamble or build-up. The thought of his girlfriends reaction to this interesting suggestion (Hell! She must have fallen right off the cycle in shock!) was enough for me to immediately christen him LHS, an abbreviation of his exact dialogue ("Lets have......").

However, it is not as if BOFi is all bad. In fact, he does have many traits which I am proud of. He has a degree of maturity, of mental strength and reserve, which I sorely lack. Besides, he is very useful, because there are many situations which I am forced to be in, which I would run away from in normal circumstances. It is at times like this that I retreat into myself and the BOFi takes charge, dealing with the situation as he deems fit. I do have a decent amount of control over him, enough to use him usefully. Yet at times, when my guard is down, he emerges unbidden, and does things which I regret later. Eventually I guess I will have to become one with him, strike a compromise between my two existences, my two identities. Yet I rebel against this, and hold on as long as possible to the fast disappearing shreds of my childhood, uncertain of the future, and unwilling to face the world.....

Finally we will come to the tale of my own nicking. I still remember the incident, like it were yesterday. It was around 12 at night, when I was returning to hostel along with two friends of mine. We had gone for a walk around the campus after the freshie quiz, to take advantage of the beautiful weather. On our way back, we were stopped by a large group of second years in front of the library. They first disposed of the other two quite fast, since they already had nicknames, and then concentrated all their attentions on me. After a long session of general questioning, they decided I was safe enough to try more daring things with, as I wouldn't go running and complain to the warden or something (People actually do that!). Then one of them had a bright idea. A few seconds later I found myself, to the great amusement of all the seniors, holding my backside and hopping around shouting 'Aaaaeeeeeee' (Don't even ask me what that means...). After I had done this for some time, they asked me to stop, and one of them, barely able to suppress his laughter, informed me that I appeared as if my 'butt was on fire'. And thus I became BOFi.

And thus it all started. And thus it continues. You may argue that I think too much about small things, and that it happens to everyone, that everybody hurts, and I'll agree. You may argue that most of what I wrote was bullshit, and that nothing ever happened, and I'll be forced to just keep quiet and let you keep your opinions while I keep mine. You may argue that I tend to overdramatise things, but then I'll blame that on BOFi. You may argue that all I've done is follow the age old tradition of blaming all my faults on others, and I'll have to tell you there is no other. I am both simultaneously, or atleast, a bit of me is in both. And that's ok really, in fact, or so I hope, it's a good way to resolve things, as long as you know it is true. It is like the great engineering maxim-"To make something work, quite often you just have to break it apart and reassemble it". Or as one Peter Parker put it so well before me (Hey Satya, dedication to you da, for making me read all those comics at your place, and showing me a way of life which I could seriously consider adopting after IIT. You got extra room in that pad of yours.....?)

This is my gift. This is my curse.

Close Encounters of the Turd Kind

2004-10-06T03:04:00.000-05:00

A few junta complained about my last post that the title had nothing much to do with the post. So, while the hostel spirit was in clear evidence, nothing really smelled. And although I feel that their views stink, I intend in this post to undo this discrepancy. And in the process, I also intend to talk a bit about my beloved hostel cat (who was faintly alluded to in the last post). And to complete the bouquet of interesting odours, we may have a paean or two for the red guy (one of the original inspirations for this post....and...for most other things I do).

Hey Sneha, looks like it's my turn to give the Pirsig-write-all-you-want-to-write-before-writing strategy a shot.

I had originally wanted to title this post as "My Family and Other Animals', since most of it is about the animals with whom I share this beautiful campus (Note: I am not referring to either Wimpys or any other insects in this classification, 'cause, quite frankly, they bug the hell out of me!). The problem was that my family will, in all probabilities, not make an appearance in this post, and I did not want another unfulfilled title on my hands.

The events described herein will in all probabilities not follow any recognizable order, chronological or topical, seeing as they are generated by the wonderful random generator in my brain (Think of any number......I bet I aint thinking of it!), linked together in most cases by the presence of an animal, and sometimes, not even that. I would love to claim I am practising free association writing, or whatever its called, but truth be told, I am not. Anyway, here goes....

Over the last few days, primarily due to the fact that my cycle's punctured and I am too lazy to go repair it, but also due to the brilliant weather we have been experiencing, I decided to walk to all my classes. So every morning, I pick up my books and trudge off into the forest, only to emerge some 10 minutes later at the ESB. In the process, I am treated to some brilliant experiences. Quite often, junta decide to stop cycling and give me company (hey Ajith, thanks da), leading to a few long, meaningless, but thoroughly enjoyable discussions ("Why are you walking?" "Because my cycles not repaired yet." "O yeah, you told me yesterday......"). Sometimes, when I am lucky, I manage to tag along with the red guy, whereupon we have some extremely meaningful and equally enjoyable conversations ("The ego is the beginning of all illusions. Only by overcoming the illusion of the self can you achieve communion with the universal soul.""Hell! You don't say so. How the hell do I do that!?"" Do not bathe for a week...."). Most often however, its much nicer walking alone, surrounded by imposing trees on all sides. Sometimes a deer or two crosses my path, and I wait respectfully for it to pass. Above, in the canopy of the trees, the birds sing that Prudence is part of everything. Sometimes, when it rains, its kind of fun jumping over puddles, and most often, falling right into them with resounding splashes. And as Murphy laughs at you from above, you laugh back, and the world seems wonderful after all.
"The year's at the spring,
And day's at the morn,
Morning's at seven,
The hill-side's dew-pearled.
The lark's on the wing,
The snail's on the thorn,
God's in his heaven,
All's right with the world."
Robert Browning-Pippa's Passes

Ok, the point of all that was to illustrate the fact that I have been walking to class. Thus, my spatial settings during the incident that I am going to write about have been clearly defined. That done, we move on....

It was afternoon...no....no...there's no getting away from the time....it was 12 in the afternoon. At the exact moment when lunch was served at Tapti, I was walking back from class. As I weaved my way around puddles (and waded my way through a few too), I suddenly noticed something moving in a bush a little way ahead of my to my right. And before I could take another step, a head appeared, followed in quick succession by a long, lithe body. With a graceful movement, its entire form appeared from behind the bush, black and glistening, hugging the ground as it soundlessly crossed the path, not more than 10 feet in front of me.

Now I am no expert in snakes, so I can't make educated guesses about its breed. I can't even certify whether it was poisonous or not. And frankly, I don't want to. It retracts from the majesty of the thing to go around describing it through the narrow lens of scientific curiousity. A snake in the wild knows no genus, no species, no classification. It is a free spirit, a symbol of awe, and wonder,...... and sheer terror.

Interestingly, and I must admit, a trifle worryingly, my first reaction was of consternation at being too far away from it to clearly make out it's features. Now I do not claim to be brave or anything, in fact, I am as far from it as can be. It was just that....it was too awe inspiring a sight at first to allow any emotion other than wonder. However, almost instantaneously, I was rooted to my spot, overcome by terror. And for almost a minute after it had disappeared from sight, I was unable to move. Then, I somehow gathered myself and headed off in the direction of the road, unable to even muster enough courage to look around me in fear of looking right into its eyes.....

And although I, in all probabilities, won't stop walking to class, I have to admit that this incident scared the shit out of me! But that's not how this post got its name.......

One of the most brilliant things about the IIT-M campus is that its right in the heart of a forest. And what good is a forest without its share of wildlife. This post is basically about this wildlife, and their interaction with me. Now this, in itself, is a very exhaustive topic, as in the span of one year I have been treated to a plethora of interesting experiences on the wild side, ranging from huge wild boars crossing the road a few feet away from me to watching deer eating grass outside my window at 2 at night, so close that I could touch them. I have seen monkeys using ladders to climb trees (evolution! Right in front of my eyes), black bucks cross an entire road in a single leap (one of the most graceful things I have ever seen), dogs attending digital systems class to the great consternation of the professor ("there's nothing for you here, I say....") and huge lizards forcing junta to empty out their entire room of all furniture before they come out from their hiding places. Now each of them merit a paragraph or two, but I'd rather prefer to stick to three particular incidences.

The first was the encounter with the snake.

The second one involves GF, my hostel cat. She is one of the hostel's most endearing features, and has one of the most interesting fundaes behind her name. Originally she used to be called Garfield, owing to her close resemblance to her namesake (tawny? I was never very good at describing colours.....). However one day, while she was lying on her side, one very observant Taptian noticed something which made the name unsuitable for her. However, to give her a new name was out of the question as everyone had got too used to her old name. Then someone had the brilliant idea of shortening her name, and so GF was nicked.

GF has many traits which endears her to us. During lunchtime, she saunters into the mess hall and looks around for either me or Amrut, as we are generally the most generous with our tidbits and also the most regular fish eaters around. As soon as she finds us, she positions herself below our chair, looks up at us with big pleading eyes and makes a few preliminary mews. If we ignore her, she raises her front paws onto our knees, stands on her hind legs and looks into our eyes with a plaintive look, one which never fails to melt our hearts and earn her a good portion of our lunch. This she then proceeds to dispose of with some relish, and then resumes her pleading. Sometimes, she slowly unsheathes one claw and gives us a nudge with it to gently remind us of her presence. All these charades are extremely irritating for our neigbouring diners, many of whom are afraid of cats, but for Amrut and me, it is pure bliss.

Outside the mess, GF is generally quite undemonstrative of her affections. So, the following incident came as a bit of a surprise. I was coming back one day from a lab class, feeling pretty low. For some reason my program refused to work (voice of reason-some reason you say....incompetence perhaps?), and so, for the first time, I had been forced to submit someone else's assignment under my own name. So, I was naturally pretty dejected. GF was lying down in the corridor. Normally, she would not even have shown a flicker of recognition, but on that day she suddenly arose as I passed her, and came and rubbed against my legs for a second or two, and then went back to her repose.

Now I do not claim to be an expert on animal psychology. I have no idea whether they can actually recognize human emotions, whether they are capable of responding to them. You can argue that what she did was merely an instinctive response, hardwired in her meager brain, like a reflex response, like the urge to flee from danger, like a goddam state in a goddam finite state machine, a simple response to a simple recognizable external stimuli. All I can do in return is throw up my hands and admit ignorance. But then, I must judge this incident from the point of view of its effect on me, rather than a purely rational approach, for, call it selfishness if you must, it is me which is most important to me. And its effect on me was simple-it killed me! I don't know how GF knew that I was feeling down, and I do not care. For what happened was a thing of beauty, a wordless consolation, a simple act of sympathy. And it helped...boy did it help!

This reference to GF was intended to end with the joyous announcement of the birth of her 4 kittens, who were the darlings of all of Tapti. However, many a day passed before this post was started, and completed, and in between, tragedy struck. On 13th October, the dead bodies of three of the kittens was found in the field, apparently the prey of a stray dog. No one knows how it entered, but the damage had been done. I was away in Delhi when the incident happened, and returned today to see the gut wrenching sight of GF running blindly all over the hostel, looking for her kittens. I do not know if there is anything I can do for it, or if it will make a difference at all. Conventional thought dictates that it won't, that she does not have deep enough feelings to be greatly affected by this, that she will recover soon enough, that such happenings are common in the wild. But I, due to the previous incident, as odd and made up as this sounds, feel a sort of link with her. I feel that conventional thought has got it wrong, that she does have some feelings akin to what we would consider as...perhaps...human. And I feel so helpless that I can't repay her for the favour she did to me. I can't in anyway console her in her hour of need, as she consoled me in mine, though my problems pale in comparison to hers. All I can do is write about it, and hope that somehow the act of spreading mine, and vicariously, her sadness, will in someway bring her some peace. Perhaps your prayers...

Ok...

This is the squalid part of the post, and the scene changes. Now we talk of some monkey business.

Monkeys are the most irritating goddam creatures around campus. Wimpys don't even come close in comparison. In my previous hostel, we used to live in terror of them. Many a day I was woken up in the morning by the sound of a monkey rummaging around in my cupboard in search of food (seriously!). They are everywhere-Outside the mess waiting to pounce on us, throwing down clothes from clothes lines, knocking down cycles in cycle stands, in the bog....

Ladies and gentlemen, first let me introduce you to the red guy, 'cause from here on, the rest of the post is inspired by him. The red guy is an elec senior of mine, and also coincidently my school senior. However, the reason for my respect for him is his amazing creative ability, particularly in writing. I have seen him produce pieces of sheer genius out of virtually nowhere, whereas I have to struggle for prolonged periods of time before something close to meaningful is produced. I have seen him write long editorials, in a sort of trance like state, while all I could do was stand and admire, not even capable enough to comment. I have seen him take extremely ordinary articles, and with a swish of his magic wand, enrich them with a certain beauty, a certain meaning, while I was left thinking "Hell, how come I didn't think of that?". Because of his reclusive nature, not too many know about him in the institute, but those who do will surely never forget him.

However, the red guy does not make an appearance here by virtue of his creative talents. Instead, it is another of his peculiarities which brings him to mind today-his aversion to bathing, or as Shamanth may term it, his unkempt pseud. Urban legends claim that he once made scratches on his wall to count the number of days he had gone without bathing, ala Robinson Crusoe. Initially, his wing junta turned a blocked nose to him, as it helped keep the monkeys away, but when a herd of skunks decided to set up camp in the wing, attracted undoubtedly by the bracing air, they decided to take action and dragged him to the bogs. Since then, the red guy has walked a tightrope between unkempt pseudness and social ostracism.

Once I had happened to hear a very interesting conversation in which a batchmate of the red guy's had enquired about the reasons behind his aversion to baths. The red guy then informed him that his aversion to bathing stemmed from the fact that he loved bathing at home. Now this comment seemed quite cryptic to me at the time, but a few days later I witnessed the third incident which I have alluded to before, one which seemed to me to explain the red guys statement. And so, although I have never again asked him about it, this is my theory.

The scene:Sarayu hostel top floor. The time:8.30 in the morning. The day:Saturday. The BOFi woke up from sleep and decided to go and have a bath, since he had anyway missed breakfast. He slowly arose from bed, groped around for his spectacles and towel and groggily made his way towards the bog. All around there was an unusual silence. The birds were silent (possibly because there very rarely were birds inside Sarayu), the bees were silent (ditto), the people were silent (recovering from previous nights partying....what party you ask...who cares?). As he neared the bog, he got a premonition of some evil, an undercurrent of tension and bad things. The air didn't smell quite right, but when does it around IIT bogs? And an odd noise was coming from inside the bog...a sort of chattering, which he put down to some first years suddenly discovering the supposed pleasures of surreptitious bog fagging sessions. He entered and steered his way to his favourite w/c (favourite...sheesh! There was but one) and was surprised to find the door shut. In order to ask the occupant to hurry up, the BOFi very civilly gave the door a resounding kick and was shocked to find it swing open without any resistance. Inside sat a monkey, eyeing BOFi with a look of benevolance tinged with a hint of irritation at being interrupted in it's task.

The BOFi fled for his dear life. Eyewitnesses claim that he even flailed his arms about his head and screamed that the end of the world had come and all should get ready to meet his maker. And for the next few days, he made sure he wasn't the first to use the bog in the morning.....

Now suppose you are back home, firmly ensconced in your beloved bog, performing your duties at leisure, perhaps composing an ode or two in the process, when all of a sudden there appears before your inner eye (which is the bliss of solitude) the image of a great big hulking monkey, demanding to share your bog with you. And all the pleasure that you derived from the process is gone forever. Red guy, I don't blame you for your non bathing. You bet I don't

That's all for now folks. Happy Durga Puja/Dussehra/Navratri/whatever you want to call it. Keep smiling and enjoy.

Smells like Hostel Spirit

2004-10-02T09:52:00.000-05:00

This was not what I had intended to write about, but while writing another post, I suddenly realized that it was turning out to be too personal and depressing, and at that moment I didn't feel like writing it anyway. So I decided to write something light, something happy. Recently I had a discussion with Keerthi about mood swings, when I realized that, atleast for me, it is easier to retain sad memories rather than happy ones. Thus, the happy moments are more transient, of lesser frequency than the depressing ones, although both cause comparable emotional responses. While thinking of this, I suddenly remembered one of my professors talking about the difficulties of storing electricity, due to which it has to be continuously generated and distributed. Blogs and diaries, IMHO, serve as capacitors for storing happy memories, which can be tapped at a later date, when required. A sort of pensieve perhaps.

And so I decided to write about an incident which happened a few days back, and through it try to highlight, as far as possible, the joys of hostel life, and the concept of Hostel Spirit, ridiculed and inveighed by many, but passionately exhibited by the rest.

First of all, I happen to belong to TAPTI hostel, which, if you ask me, is the best goddam hostel on the face of this earth!

Over the last few days, Chennai has received a prodigious quantity of rainfall, something which has taken the entire city by surprise. For people who sometimes get the impression that they are in the middle of a desert, who value their water as highly as their coffee, who have evolved remarkable ways of tolerating the fact that people around them have in all probabilities not bathed the whole week(spices, flowers in hair, nose plugs!), rain was something of a surprise. Children pestered parents with repeated questions of,"what the hell is this?" (ok...So perhaps 'hell' wasn't used), origamists did a roaring trade of selling paper boats, the police took emergency precautionary measures ("Man those lifeboats, I say."), and old timers reminiscented about the good old days when there was water in the Adyar (and were promptly packed of to Bedlam for such obviously hallucinogenic comments)

Hallucinogenic comments!? Sheesh, sounds like the fine print on heroin packets.

Not that I would know better (grammar or narcotic packet printing).

Anyways, to getting back to the flow (by God, did it flow!), Chennai faced what was the modern equivalent of the deluge. And we, at IIT-M suffered. Boy, did we suffer! The entire campus took on the look of a tropical rain forest (forest and tropical it already was, all it needed was the rain). Every pothole was converted to a knee deep mud pit. All sports facilities were converted to swimming pools (which was actually good fun for me, as I got to enjoy the spectacle of junta trying to play badminton in half a court, and periodically falling into the other half, with loud splashes and even louder curses). Hygienic conditions got worse as not only did people not take baths now due to the cold water (what didya say? Geysers in hostels! You comfort seekers...), but also clothes stubbornly refused to dry, and so what was dry was worn days on end. Rumours spread of anacondas being attracted by the conditions and coming across from the Guindy snake farm next door. Explorers suddenly discovered a lake in the midst of the campus, in what was always imagined to be a crater left over from some surreptitious atomic bomb research. Rooms got flooded, and residents took to placing their desks and chairs over their beds and studying (and no, this didn't give them a high). People suddenly discovered that crazy bongs don't go nowhere without an umbrella, and tried hard to befriend them......

Sorry, got swept away by the flood of words. Anyway, in the midst of all this downpour and uproar, their occurred an incident which to me, more than any other, epitomized hostel life.

It began one evening, at 7.30, when I suddenly decided to abandon my room and go sit in Amrut's. While there, we were joined by Semi, and held a long discussion on...Well...nevermind. Point is, on returning to my room at around 12 (don't ask me how we wasted 2 and a half hours...God only knows), I suddenly realized that I had left my tubelight on and my window open, and that there was a small stagnant pool outside my window.

Now fellow IITians, at this point, will puke all over their rooms, overcome by the horror of it all. For the rest, permit me a small digression to describe the weird life cycle of this weird insect, whose name is unknown to me. For convenience, we will call them wimpy (in memory of the last time we crushed him underfoot, and also the fact that they very closely mimic his habit of going to close to flames and getting his wings clipped off). This insect is unheard of throughout the year, but give it a stagnant puddle, and a light source, and they turn up in droves. Hell, we already had enough trouble with the deluge, and now a plague of insects! For God's sake, let His people go, I say. Anyways, these insects have the weird habit of blindly rushing towards light sources and gathering around them. They also have the weakest wings I've ever seen, as they break off on the slightest provocation.

Thus, at 12 at night, I enter my room to find it overrun by wimpys.

The horror, the horror!

Now by overrun, I do not mean a few straggling wimpys. No sir, it was a regular old swarm. All I could do was switch off the light, and run out screaming, with insects all over my hair, in my mouth, in my ears....(the BOFi goes of to puke....)

Aha, better. So where was I?

Thankfully Amrut, at this moment, had the brilliant idea of going to the night canteen. So off we trooped, the three of us, although I was the only roomless one. Amrut and Semi could easily have gone of to sleep, leaving me all alone with the Wimpys. If you think that is kindness, hold on. There's more to come. At the canteen, Amrut suddenly decided to treat us, for reasons unfathomable to me to this day. Unfortunately, it wasn't a great meal as we had to eat in the dark and constantly pluck insects out of the buttermilk (The Wimpys turned up here too, drawn by the scent of a treat,I guess, like their namesake). However, there is a certain charm to any meal eaten after 12.30, and so it wasn't entirely unenjoyable.

Around 2, we returned to the hostel. I went and surveyed my room and found that it was a complete mess with people eating at tables and waiters serving. Shit, why did I write that?! Anyway, point is, room was filled with dead Wimpys and their wings. Now these crazy insects have not two but four wings, which they had shed everywhere. Outside in the corridor, the areas adjoining the tubelights were knee deep with dead insects. GF, the hostel cat was having a merry time chomping away on them (Mental note-feed that goddam cat a bit more during grubtime so that she doesnt resort to weating insects!). So now i was faced with the prospect of spending the next hour cleaning my entire room, when, out of nowhere, Semi offered to help. And I thought, my God! my God! It's 2 at night, and this man, who's obviously sleepy is offering to help me clean my room of insects! I mean, hell, 2 at night, and the man wants to ! And help he did. As did my good neighbour, Mahanama (on whose comp I'm writing this post), who came along to see if he could do anything, and went around organizing brooms. So, between the two of us (Semi and me, Amrut was too sleepy, and Mahanama had some work), we overhauled the entire room, moved all my furniture, and cleaned out a ton of dead Wimpys and Wimpy wings. And if that weren't enough, Semi brought along an unused bedsheet of his to replace mine, which had Wimpy wings all over it. Then, at 3, with my room all cleaned up, he went back to sleep. All I could offer in return was.....a word of thanks!

Hostel life is BRILLIANT. There are no two ways about it. I can not think of any other place where a similar incident could have taken place. At home, everyone may have helped to clean up a mess, but that's because everyone actually lives there. Semi however has never spent more than perhaps an hour in my room. So what the hell motivated him to do what he did that night. Friendship-definitely. The feeling that one day he could be in a similar situation-perhaps. Hostel spirit-you can bet on it.

No matter what other people say, hostel spirit isn't only about putting fight in lit and sport events, about cheering on hostel teams, about going around proudly wearing hostel jerseys and T-shirts. Its more about the camaraderie that develops between the inhabitants of a hostel. The experience of living together for months on end with many people, with diverse origins, languages, religious beliefs, habits, etc, drawn together by this one common thread of sharing a hostel. It is a feeling which can't be easily conveyed in words (Ha! An escape clause to cover up for gult post), but has to be experienced.

Off the Stumbling Blog

2004-09-26T01:02:00.000-05:00

Ok....this is how it all began. Wanted to start of blog with this article, but while writing it, suddenly realized that it was turning out badly. And although shamnath was still nice about it, and accepted it for publication, I am still very pained about it. Thing is, halfway through the article, I lost interest. Lovely topic, just that, there's nothing to write about it. Anyways, as raghavan would say, blog's for me and that sort of thing, so I'm posting it, albeit with a great deal of hesitation. Also, for some reason, I don't seem to be able to come to grips with formatting text, so fonts are a bit messed up in places. But i hope kind readers (voice of reason-somebody hit the BOFi on the head with a hammer or something) will forgive me for that.
Here goes-

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in IIT-M that our scene lies), rattling along the hostel tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. In one of the obscurest[sic] hostels of IIT-M, the BOFi was typing his solitary article. He stopped twice or thrice at different opening lines and tended inquiry to his aesthetic sense about their aptness. All the answers he received were couched in the negative; and as he turned from each line he muttered to himself, in no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and discontent."

The BOFi sat staring at an empty screen filled with possible opening lines for his article, unable to select any. For if one was bad, another was badder, and the third, well, was badminton. And then it struck him like a clock striking 13- if every opening line he came up with was so bad, then why not go the whole hog and just start of with the worst possible opening line ever. And so inspite of the fact that not a cloud was to be seen in the sky, his ‘if’ was soon turned to weather and thus began this article.

A long time ago, in a manor far far away…..

Lord Edward George Bulwer-Lytton was born 1803. He was educated at Trinity College Cambridge. He began writing to finance an extravagant lifestyle. For forty years he was known as Bulwer, for twenty-two as Bulwer-Lytton, having added his mother's surname upon inheriting his ancestral estate of Knebworth (which became famous as Batman’s stately ‘Wayne Manor’), and the last seven as Lord Lytton. The mathematically adventurous are invited to try and calculate the year of his death from the above.

Experts claim that Lytton’s work expresses some of the most significant intellectual currents of the nineteenth century. He was a source of inspiration for many, most notably Madame Blavatsky of the Theosophical Movement. His novel on thirteenth century Italy, Rienzi, inspired Wagner's third opera. Yet, in spite of this glorious resume, the world remembers him for his ludicrous surname, and, more notably, the ludicrous opening paragraph of his novel, “Paul Clifford”, which has been repeatedly plagiarized by Snoopy in his attempts at writing a novel, and more recently.......plagiarized by me.

Not so long ago, in a University far far away…..

In 1982, Professor Scott Rice of the English Department at San Jose State University started a novel competition. After long years spent as uncomplaining martyr to the cause of judging writing contests, not all of which, as one may readily imagine, soared to great heights, the disgruntled gentleman decided to start a contest to honor bad writing. Many years previously, when asked to write a seminar paper on a minor Victorian novelist, he had discovered Edward George Bulwer-Lytton and ‘Paul Clifford’. Now, he decided to name the new competition in his honor. Thus the ‘Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest’ was born, its avowed intention - to find and reward the worst possible opening lines of books.

In its first year, the contest attracted three entries. The following year Rice went public with the contest and attracted national and international attention. Since then, the contest has grown every year.

The rules of the contest are specified in their website-www.bulwer-lytton.com along with loads of other interesting stuff. In case you have a lot of free time, I strongly reccomend this site.

In conclusion (although a conclusion for an article about opening lines seems a bit ironical), I would like to dwell upon what I feel is the only negative effect of these awards. They are, to the best of my knowledge, the only example of an award in any field, which tends to push the bar lower. So for all of you who are imagining that it can’t be too tough to write badly-be warned. The Bulwer-Lytton awards have this disconcerting effect of pulling away the floor from under you, leaving you suspended in a state of mediocrity. The title of being the worst writer ever has never been so keenly contested. Ok, now for a few of my favourites. For more, go check out the BLFC website. It is engrossing reading

*The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and pleasant for those who hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know. --Patricia E. Presutti, Lewiston, New York (1986 Winner)

*Sultry it was and humid, but no whisper of air caused the plump, laden spears of golden grain to nod their burdened heads as they unheedingly awaited the cyclic rape of their gleaming treasure, while overhead the burning orb of luminescence ascended its ever-upward path toward a sweltering celestial apex, for although it is not in Kansas that our story takes place, it looks godawful like it. --Judy Frazier, Lathrop, Missouri (1991 Winner)

*"Ace, watch your head!" hissed Wanda urgently, yet somehow provocatively, through red, full, sensuous lips, but he couldn't you know, since nobody can actually watch more than part of his nose or a little cheek or lips if he really tries, but he appreciated her warning. --Janice Estey, Aspen, Colorado (1996 Winner)

*On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained. --Rephah Berg, Oakland CA (2002 Winner)

*The legend about Padre Castillo's gold being buried deep in the Blackwolf Hills had lain untold for centuries and will continue to do so for this story is not about hidden treasure, nor is it set in any mountainous terrain whatsoever. --Siew-Fong Yiap

*Galileo Galilei gazed expectantly through his newly invented telescope and then recoiled in sudden horror -- his prized thoroughbred's severed neck, threateningly discarded in a murky mass of interstellar dust (known to future generations as the Horsehead Nebula), left little doubt about where the Godfather and his Vatican musclemen stood on the recent geocentric/heliocentric debate. --Don Mowbray

*And my personal favourite-
The Sultan, having dutifully consulted with his palace sages, historians, and theologians, was finally convinced that nothing in the lore of his religion could guide him in the selection of a Network Operating System, and the conclusion was now clear to him, that though most computers in the Palace Administration should run under WINDOWS, yet the Harem Management must be served by UNIX. --Mr. Harry W. Hickey